Editing Batch processing (section)

== Modern systems ==
Batch applications are still critical in most organizations in large part because many common business processes are amenable to batch processing. While online systems can also function when manual intervention is not desired, they are not typically optimized to perform high-volume, repetitive tasks. Therefore, even new systems usually contain one or more batch applications for updating information at the end of the day, generating reports, printing documents, and other non-interactive tasks that must complete reliably within certain business deadlines.

Some applications are amenable to flow processing, namely those that only need data from a single input at once (not totals, for instance): start the next step for each input as it completes the previous step. In this case flow processing lowers [[latency (engineering)|latency]] for individual inputs, allowing them to be completed without waiting for the entire batch to finish. However, many applications require data from all records, notably computations such as totals. In this case the entire batch must be completed before one has a usable result: partial results are not usable.

Modern batch applications make use of modern batch frameworks such as Jem The Bee, [[Spring Batch]]<ref>{{Cite book |last=Minella |first=Michael |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2tOSxcKmdyoC&dq=history+of+batch+processing&pg=PA2 |title=Pro Spring Batch |date=2011-10-13 |publisher=Apress |isbn=978-1-4302-3453-1 |language=en}}</ref> or implementations of [[Java Specification Request|JSR]] 352<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=352|title=Batch Applications for the Java Platform|publisher=Java Community Process|access-date=2015-08-03}}</ref> written for [[Java (programming language)|Java]], and other frameworks for other programming languages, to provide the [[fault tolerance]] and [[scalability]] required for high-volume processing.  In order to ensure high-speed processing, batch applications are often integrated with [[grid computing]] solutions to [[partition of a set|partition]] a batch job over a large number of processors, although there are significant programming challenges in doing so. High volume batch processing places particularly heavy demands on system and application architectures as well. Architectures that feature strong [[input/output]] performance and vertical [[scalability]], including modern [[mainframe computers]], tend to provide better batch performance than alternatives.

[[Scripting languages]] became popular as they evolved along with batch processing.<ref>{{cite web
|publisher=IBM.com
|title=JSR352 null
|url=https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=tss1wp102544&aid=5
|quote=JSR 352, the open standard specification for Java batch processing. ... The programming languages used evolved over time based on what was available
|access-date=2018-10-19
|archive-date=2018-10-20
|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181020011704/https://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=tss1wp102544&aid=5
|url-status=dead
}}</ref>