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The 2024 Virtual ECL Workshop – Sleep Well with ECL: Job Automation and Scheduling 

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In a recent session at the 2024 Community Summit, Bob Foreman, Software Engineering Lead, and lead ECL trainer at LexisNexis Risk Solutions, presented a workshop titled “Sleep Well with ECL Job Automation and Scheduling.”  

Bob opened the workshop with his usual warm welcome and expressed his enthusiasm for sharing his knowledge of ECL that he has amassed over the past fourteen years teaching all over the globe. The aim was to provide attendees with a mix of valuable insights and practical applications concerning job scheduling and process automation in ECL. While a basic understanding of ECL was beneficial, Bob provided a thorough explanation of the material throughout the two-hour session and taught in a way that even participants new to the language could follow along. So, if you are new to all of this, please make sure you check out the online Introduction to ECL Courses (Part 1 and 2) before viewing the full workshop available on the HPCC Systems YouTube channel.

Agenda Overview  

 The workshop focused on demonstrating how tasks are scheduled and automated in production environments. Key topics highlighted included:  

  • CRON() Jobs – How to launch jobs that need to run periodically.  Participants learned how to launch workunits at specific times or repetitively at intervals like every hour or every five minutes. 
  • Triggering Events – How to launch jobs that need to run when something specific happens.  This section introduced how to activate workunits based on specific events, providing greater automation. 
  • An Extensive Real-World Example – Production-ready code that uses these tools to monitor your Landing Zone for a specific file to show up, then automatically imports and processes new data files. In this example, a wide variety of ECL techniques and best practices were demonstrated.  

What laid the groundwork for this workshop is the latest article from Richard Taylor, “ECL Scheduling and Process Automation”. This was his last writing before retiring from LexisNexis Risk Solutions in July 2024. Richard was the Chief Trainer at LexisNexis Risk Solutions and an ECL Master for the past 20+ years. He was also the original member of the Documentation Team for ECL and HPCC Systems.  Bob took the opportunity to honor Richard’s contributions, particularly this last project.  

One of the central themes of the workshop was the importance of knowing when to launch processes for effective automation. ECL offers a range of workflow services, but Bob highlighted the “WHEN” workflow service in particular. This service allows users to specify conditions under which a process should execute, such as the existence of a dataset or the occurrence of a particular event.  

Tools and Resources  

Before getting started, Bob emphasized the necessity of having the right tools and shared the link to the GitHub repository which you can find here.  

This repository contains all the code and resources needed to apply the best practices in a real-world environment. To ensure everyone could follow along, he briefly demonstrated how to access the repository and integrate the code into various development environments like the ECL IDE and Visual Studio Code. Bob also shared a reminder about the importance of being aware of your company’s security measures while working with HPCC Systems components.  

Conclusion 

The “Sleep Well with ECL Job Automation and Scheduling” workshop was an enriching experience, filled with knowledge transfer and practical skills development. As participants left with new insights and resources, they were equipped to harness ECL potential for automation and scheduling within their production environments. As Bob Foreman continues to advocate best practices for ECL programming, the legacy of Richard Taylor lives on, inspiring a new generation of ECL users to push boundaries and automate their workflows effectively. For those looking to deepen their understanding of ECL and partake in the revolution of job automation, visiting the provided GitHub repository is a fantastic next step.