This deserves some clarification. The background queue is simply a Progress
process (prowin32 on NT) which runs programs in batch mode. Since it's
single-threaded, if you run a fairly processor-intensive program, you can
completely bury one of your processors. Since by default it uses a *run.pf
file to start, its memory requirements are no different from your other
clients. In other words, processor time is probably more of a concern than
memory, since it won't haphazardly consume memory on the server.
If you use the background queue to schedule after-hours jobs--as most of our
clients do--then its impact on your server will be minimal. If your
end-users schedule jobs to run throughout the work day, then yes, you'll be
tying up one of your processors completely. I'd say you're left with two
choices at that point: Either strongly suggest that your users schedule
jobs after-hours, or move your background queue to another system.
Probably worth mentioning at this point is AppServer . . . but I don't have
the time!
Regards,
--Fred Pullen
frpul@logicdata.com
