Message Batches

[Julian Field]

At 20:06 15/05/2003, you wrote:
> > At 17:35 15/05/2003, you wrote:
> > >It got me thinking - would it not be more efficient for each
> > child to work
> > >to the batch size using the following:  total messages in
> > queue/max number
> > >of children = batch size per child - which would clear the queue more
> > >efficiently???
> >
> > At the moment, any child takes as many messages as it can up
> > to the limits
> > set in the batch size parameters.
> > Counting the total number of messages that *can* be scanned
> > is actually
> > quite an expensive operation. At the moment it only has to be
> > done once as
> > messages are date-sorted then put in the batch. The
> > file-locking operation
> > only has to be done once.
> >
> > Changing to the method you suggest could only be done by
> > adding them all to
> > the batch and then by removing all the excess ones you don't
> > want. Which
> > means you need to remember what order they were added.
> > Possible, but messy.
>
>(I don't know if this can be done but ...) what about some sort of
>communication with each of the mailscanner processes to see how many
>messasges they are currently processing?  Or a global variable that keeps
>track of the current number of messages being processed for all sub
>processes?  Then the routine would be something like:
>
>Sort all of the messages (queue files)
>Get the number of messages the other processes are working on
>Available msgs = all msgs - msgs being processed
>
>Now you can do some algorithm on the number of available messages.
>
>Just a thought, and maybe it's not possible.

Involves lots of IPC which I'm not keen on for reliability reasons.
--
Julian Field
www.MailScanner.info
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