Oracle jobs x Windows services

[Erik Cruz]

Hi.

The application I am developing needs to update/delete records from an
Oracle 8i database once a day. Together, the tables have more than 500.000
records.
At this moment, I am using an Oracle job to do the work but I am considering
the use of a Window service for the next version of the application. As I
don`t have any kind of materials comparing jobs and services, I would like
to hear your opinions about this issue. Any kind of help would be greatly
appreciated!

TIA,
Erik Cruz

 

[Nick Malik]

What would be the value in moving this kind of operation out of Oracle?

Normally, with DB operations, you want to leave large updates within the
database, if possible. This is because the effort to package and move the
data in and out of the database can be far more than the effort needed to
update the record itself, meaning that you can more than double the time it
takes to run your job if you are running it from a Windows service.

If, on the other hand, you just want to start it from Windows (a single
command) and allow Oracle to run, then it doesn't really matter whether it
starts from inside a service or inside an Oracle job. Then, I'd have to
ask, why write code to trigger something, when Oracle provides working code
to trigger something? If your app needs to "do" some things immediately
before or after the Oracle job, and for some reason, you don't want to have
Oracle simply call a component that you wrote, then, by all means, move the
functionality. Otherwise, don't change it.

--- Nick