JavaZone 2009 - Right on Schedule
Enterprise applications often need to schedule tasks to run at a later time, either once or periodically. There's several ways to go about this: EJB 2.1 introduced a timer service (which will get some sorely needed extensions in JEE 6), there's the popular Quartz system from OpenSymphony, and Oracle and IBM promote the Timer and Work Manager API (CommonJ, JSR-236), to mention a few. And then there's always cron.
This lightning talk explains why you might need a job scheduler, compares common solutions and frameworks, and describes some gotchas you should avoid.
Markus Bjartveit Krüger
Markus Krüger is a Sun Certified Enterprise Architect developing enterprise systems at ErgoGroup AS, one of the largest Norwegian software companies offering operations, solutions, and consultancy services. He is part of the company's Java technology group. Markus has 10 years experience in the software industry, working with various technologies and environments, including J2EE/JEE the last 7 years. Other experiences includes work on search engine technology at FAST, browser video plugins at GridMedia, and e-mail security and notary services at eNotarius. He has previously held talks, both internally and to open audiences, on various subjects such as CVS, Hibernate, and performance testing.