WorldServer provides the option of running certain, potentially lengthy jobs in the background. If you choose to run a job in the background, you can freely disconnect from WorldServer while waiting for the job to run, and you will be notified when the job completes. If you choose not to run the job in the background, you must stay connected to WorldServer until the job finishes.
Another advantage of running a job in the background is that the jobs run serially (that is, one after the other). If you choose not to run a job in the background, all jobs run in parallel, and system performance can degrade if many jobs are running concurrently. If you are running several jobs, running in the background can have a smaller impact on system performance than running all the jobs in parallel.
After you submit a background job, you can monitor its progress by viewing the Background Jobs queue, at . From this page, you can place a hold on a job (preventing it from starting), resume a job (releasing a hold), or change a job’s priority so that it starts sooner than a job with lower priority. In addition, you can view the log for each job, which shows details of processing that job.
For example, you may want to enable some users to create both background and foreground jobs. In this case, enable both options.
But there may be some users who should always create jobs in the background. In this case, enable the background option and disable the foreground option. When users of this type submit jobs, the jobs will always be queued up and handled serially, thus reducing the potential for overwhelming your application server.