Re: organizing cron jobs in one function

On Mon, Nov 19, 2012 at 08:31:10AM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> On 11/19/2012 01:11 AM, Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 07:27:54PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> >> On 11/18/2012 12:19 AM, Louis-David Mitterrand wrote:
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> I'm planning to centralize all db maintenance jobs from a single
> >>> pl/pgsql function called by cron every 15 minutes (highest frequency
> >>> required by a list of jobs).
> >> It sounds like you're effectively duplicating PgAgent.
> >>
> >> Why not use PgAgent instead?
> > Sure, I didn't know about PgAgent.
> >
> > Is it still a good solution if I'm not running PgAdmin and have no plan
> > doing so?
> >
> It looks like it'll work. The main issue is that if your jobs run
> over-time, you don't really have any way to cope with that. Consider
> using SELECT ... FOR UPDATE, or just doing an UPDATE ... RETURNING
> instead of the SELECT.
> 
> I'd also use one procedure per job in separate transactions. That way if
> your 4-hourly job runs overtime, it doesn't block your 5-minutely one.
> 
> Then again, I'd also just use PgAgent.

In my last question I was asking about the ability to run PgAgent
_without_ PgAdmin. Is that possible? From the docs it seems PgAgent
requires a GUI to configure jobs, and I'd rather avoid that if possbile.

Otherwise thanks for the advice, especially the 'overtime' issue (which
when a new job starts when the old one is not over yet, right?)