Where can I find a great online reference on Lotus Notes Agent. I currently having problems with having simultaneous agents and understanding agents, how it works, best practices, etc? Thanks in advance!
2
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This is a "chatty, open-ended question". Please read the FAQ for this site, and notice the section "What kind of questions should I not ask here". You have not described the problem you are having with simultaneous agents, and have not asked any specific questions about agents. It would be better if you edited your question and provided details of your problem. What agents are you trying to run? What type of agents are they? What are they supposed to do? When do you want them to run? Is the problem that they do not run? Or is the problem that they don't work the way you expect them to?
- Richard Schwartz
Thank you for this comment. I know my question has no definite answer, which should be better If I wrote it in a forum.
- John Bautista
1 Answers
8
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I currently having problems with having simultaneous agents
Based on this comment I take it you are running a scheduled agent?
The way that scheduled agents work is that only one agent from a particular database can be run at one time, even if you have multiple Agent manager (AMGR) threads. Also agents cannot run less then every 5 minutes. The UI will let you put in a lower number, but it will change it.
The other factors to take into account is how long your agent will run for. If it runs for longer then the interval time you setup you will end up backlogging the running time. Also the server can be configured to kill agents that run over a certain time. So you need to make sure the agent runs within that timeframe.
Now to bypass all this you can execute an agent from the Domino console like as follows.
tell amgr run "database.nsf" 'agentName'
This will run in it's own thread outside of the scheduler. Because of this you can create a program document to execute an agent in less then 5 minute intervals and multiple agents within the same database.
This is dangerous in doing this however, as you have to be aware of a number of issues.
As the agent is outside the control of the scheduler you can't kill it as you would in the scheduler.
Running multiple threads can tie up more processes. So while the scheduler will backlog everything if the agent runs longer then the schedule, doing a program document in this instance will crash the server.
You need to be aware of what the agent is doing in the database so that it won't interfere with any other agents in the same database, and can cope if it is run twice in parallel.
For more reading material on this:
Improving Agent Manager Performance. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/topic/com.ibm.help.domino.admin.doc/DOC/H_AGENT_MANAGER_NOTES_INI_VARIABLES.html
Agent Manager trouble shooting. http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/domhelp/v8r0/topic/com.ibm.help.domino.admin.doc/DOC/H_ABOUT_TROUBLESHOOTING_AGENTS.html
Troubleshooting Agents (Old material but still relevant) http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-Troubleshooting_agents/index.html
... and related tech notes:
Title: How to run two agents concurrently in the same database using a wrapper agent http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21279847
Title: How to run multiple agents in the same database using a Program document http://www.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21279832
