Hi
Could someone provide me with some insight into how to design an application that would send out responses at dates specified by the users over the net e.g. yahoo's greeting card application, where we specify the dates for the card to be sent out. How has this timer mechanism been developed and also how is this bulk operation being handled at the server side to provide for a scalable and performance oriented app? Any clue anyone?
Thanks
Rajarsi

Unfortunetly, timer services will only in J2EE 1.4. There is a java.util.Timer class you may find suitable (although I havn't tried it in j2ee invironment). You can also search google for java timer services - I know there are several tools, some even open source.

David

Hi David,

I thank you for your response. Are there any open sources on the net that talk of use-cases and their design implementations? Does anyone know? Also, I am curious to know how yahoo would have implemented their greeting card application specially with regard to sending out cards on "specific" dates.Does anyone know how such applications are designed? I figure there must be a polling agent that keeps track of the time elapsed. Probably when the time arrives a notification is sent out to a dedicated listener which performs the necessary operations to carry out the task of sending out a card.. Any suggestions ?

Thanks
Raj

Hi,

maybe you are looking for a java job scheduler ? if so, have a look at Quartz on sourceForge.
homepage is www.part.net/quartz.html

Hope it helps...

Cyril