Hi,
I'm trying to determine if there is another way of getting jobs in to an Orchestration Framework instance from ProjectWise other than relying on a job query set-up or adding documents in to a job and starting the processing manually. I.e. potentially implant a job set into the orchestration framework, wait for it to finish processing and then remove the job.
Looking through the Orchestration Framework SQL database it seems the vast bulk of the job configuration (ignoring the tables which define the document processors) is held in tables such as: dbo.radsJobConfigurationSetDefinition (Job plotting settings), dbo.radsJobDefinitionTable (the actual jobs set-up in the Distribution service), and many others including ones which track the job progress (which I guess allows the framework browser to report back the status).
I expect that the answer will be that Bentley will not provide assistance for such a thing, but worth an ask.
No doubt the question 'why' I want to do this will come up, and the simple answer is that the job querying is not dynamic enough within the standard orchestration framework in V8i SS2 to try to work through the workload and manage further upcoming jobs. As such, I'd rather utilize the framework as a tool for properly batch processing documents to PDFs and manage the input using another method.
If you decide to upgrade to ProjectWise iCS for PDF, there is a ProjectWise API that may be used to define and submit rendition jobs using whatever selection criteria you wish to implement. That API is included in the standard ProjectWise SDK.
However, that API is only for client applications and does not provide any insight as to what is happening on the server.
.
In SS4 the new printing system does have an API and I have created a tool to generate PDF's on command via the projectwise server system - the tool runs as a back ground server with my own search/filter for what needs to be printed and when.
Unfortunately SS4 isn't an option yet, and without SS4 infrastructure the rendition settings for use with the new composition services is not possible.
Until then I'm just trying to bridge a gap in terms of flexibility. To be fair this is more a case of trying to get more out of the distribution service than it was ultimately designed for.