Enterprise-Level SQL Scheduling at Frontline Technologies
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Databases
Applicable Industries
- Equipment & Machinery
- National Security & Defense
Applicable Functions
- Human Resources
- Maintenance
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Personnel Tracking & Monitoring
Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Frontline Technologies is a Pennsylvania-based company that is a market leader in workforce management software. The company serves thousands of global clients through its three applications: Aesop, an automated substitute placement and absence management system; Veritime, a time and attendance product; and Jobulator, an automatic job-notification service for substitute teachers. One in every five U.S. school districts uses Aesop to manage its personnel. Frontline has also expanded into a variety of other industries, including health care, security staffing, live events, manufacturing, and libraries. SQL jobs represent a majority of the company’s batch jobs, but calling Visual Basic scripts and .NET scripts are also critical to the company’s business.
The Challenge
Frontline Technologies, a market leader in workforce management software, heavily relies on SQL databases for its applications. However, the company faced several challenges with SQL's native tools. Firstly, SQL Server Agent required granting extensive database permissions to users such as developers and support staff, which was a security concern and consumed significant staff time. Secondly, SQL Server jobs were prone to blocking, where one process fails due to the consumption of a critical resource elsewhere on the system. This was a common issue when interacting with SQL at the application level. Lastly, using native SQL tools for disaster recovery did not provide Frontline with an acceptable standard of synchronization. The company required an alternate production database to be up and running within 15 to 30 minutes in case of a disaster recovery event. However, with SQL Scheduler, jobs were never 100% in sync and required manual copying of jobs, risking the loss of recent changes.
The Solution
Frontline Technologies found a solution in JAMS Job Scheduler, which closely aligned with their requirements. JAMS resolved SQL-related security, blocking, and disaster recovery issues by taking over batch processing and scheduling tasks. It centralized user privileges, eliminating risks associated with granting broad permissions. JAMS security uses Active Directory roles to authenticate users at the right permission level at the right times, making it unnecessary to grant SQL administrative rights to support and development staff. JAMS job scheduling and workload automation is independent of SQL processing, thus eliminating the issue of 'blocking'. JAMS fault tolerance architecture made it easy for Frontline to configure and maintain its disaster recovery plan. By leveraging JAMS, Frontline implemented log shipping at frequent intervals, ensuring every transaction and change to the schedule is backed up every 5 minutes and sent to a secondary data center.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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