Chapter 8. Implementing bulletproof jobs
This chapter covers
- Handling errors with retry and skip
- Logging errors with listeners
- Restarting an execution after a failure
Batch jobs manipulate large amounts of data automatically. Previous chapters showed how Spring Batch helps to read, process, and write data efficiently and without much Java code, thanks to ready-to-use I/O components. It’s time to deal with the automatic aspect of batch jobs. Batch jobs operate over long periods, at night, for example, and without human intervention. Even if a batch job can send an email to an operator when something’s wrong, it’s on its own most of the time. A batch job isn’t automatic if it fails each time something goes wrong; it needs to be able to handle errors correctly and not crash abruptly. Perhaps you know how frustrating it is to sit at your desk in the morning and see that some nightly jobs have crashed because of a missing comma in an input file.
This chapter explains techniques to make your batch jobs more robust and reliable when errors occur during processing. By the end of this chapter, you’ll know how to build bulletproof batch jobs and be confident that your batch jobs will succeed.