Lesson 1: The SmartBatch Environment

The main components of SmartBatch are shown below. These components interact to creates an easy-to-use flexible Windows automation solution. The following diagram depicts these components:

Administrator (GUI Client)

The Administrator, which provides a graphical user interface to SmartBatch, is used to configure SmartBatch objects. You create Operations, Steps, Jobs, Schedules, Parameters, Dependencies, Notification, etc. using this interface. In order to use the Administrator you must use must be in one of the SmartBatch roles. When the product is initially installed the user logged on is added to the SmartBatch Administrators role.  This role along with three others are created as part of the installation.  A role is essentially a Windows group.

Executive Server

The Executive Server accomplishes the automated processing based on the information in the database. When the date/time of a Schedule or other defined event has occurred, the Executive Server processes the associated objects. The Executive Server writes Notification events to the database. These events are read and processed by the Notification Server.

Remote Agent (Enterprise Edition)

This capability allows for cross-system scheduling  (that is, the ability to run programs on any computer running the Remote Agent) and load balancing. The Executive Server communicates with Remote Agents so that you can centrally control and manage the processing of Operations, Steps and Jobs across multiple Windows systems.

Notification Server

The Notification Server reads Notification events from the database. It determines who to contact (by Page or Email) based on the Alert List assigned to the event. For example, when an Operation fails and Notification has been configured to notify on failure, an event is written to the database by the Executive Server. The Notification Server will read this event and notify the Operators on the Alert List.

Data Sources

The SmartBatch data source can be any one of the supported database products. The Access database file (sb.mdb) is provided by SmartBatch as the default data source.  A different database product can be configured using the Database Management tool.  

Programmatic Interface

The programmatic interface provides the same interface to all software components.  All SmartBatch components use this interface.  Customers can provide their own processing against this interface for environment that may need advanced customization.  A folder called sample is installed under the folder where SmartBatch is installed.  This provides example code in a .NET solution that shows how to use this interface.  This is intended to be used by .NET experienced programmers.