Asynchronous process

When there is a lot of data to process some services don’t return the results directly but start an asynchronous process (or thread). The thread writes results to a log which can be accessed at another time.

XML returned

When a thread is started, the service output includes the following thread XML:

<thread id="[thread id]"
        name="[thread name]"
        username="[username of user starting thread]"
        groupid="[ID of group if applicable or -1]"
        status="[initialised|
                 inprogress|
                 error|
                 warning|
                 cancelled|
                 failed|
                 complete]">
  [<message>[explanation or error]</message>]
  [thread specific XML]
</thread>

For example:

<thread id="349f4fbcd872d514751f7809acf4d888"
        name="Moving thread for group test-local5"
        username="jjones"
        groupid="240"
        status="initialised">
  <message>Finding URIs</message>
</thread>

The statuses error  and warning are only transitory states, and the thread will always terminate only with one of completed, failed, or cancelled which are final states. This is because there may be several errors or warnings. Threads that include warnings would usually result in a completed state and errors in a failed state.

Thread services

Various services can be used to:

• list current threads.
• check a thread’s progress.
• get a thread's logs.
• cancel a thread.

See the Thread category under Services for more details.