BPTs versus Timers

Although both BPTs (both light and traditional) and Timers are asynchronous tools, their purposes are not that similar.

Factors such as parallelism and competition differ between the types of Processes.

By default, there are 20 threads per frontend to run Light BPT Processes, 10 threads for traditional BPT Processes, and 3 threads for Timers.

Furthermore, BPT Processes are driven by database events, while Timers are triggered by a programmed schedule (they can also be triggered in the application code with Wake, but a Timer is not an event focused on a database event).

Also, while the Timer makes three attempts to run successfully, BPTs try until they succeed or until someone cancels them in Service Center.

All these factors have to be considered when deciding on the ideal tool to use; that is, in practical terms:

• Timers are recommended for massive or time-consuming processing of data that is not oriented towards a specific database event but...