Spring Batch Questions

[laura mccord]

I am trying to figure out how to incorporate spring batch. I need to execute a class file on a scheduler and I thought that spring batch might be a good solution but the examples that I have bumped into don't seem to fit my situation.

I have a class that queries ldap and returns a list of user objects. Then I pass the user list to a separate class for processing, in this process it queries a separate database to grab some additional data associated with the user and then I email a newsletter using velocity.

The main objective is to trigger this each morning. The examples that I have read talk about an ItemReader, ItemProcessor, and ItemWriter in which it often involves processing an input file but I haven't come across an example where I can just call a class to be executed or use ldap.

So my questions are:
1. Should I just use cron?
2. Are there examples where instead of reading files I can read from ldap?

Thanks

[laura mccord]

So I found this way of doing it

<batch:job id="reportJob">
		<batch:step id="step1">
			<tasklet ref="myTasklet" />
		</batch:step>
	</batch:job>

	<bean id="myTasklet" class="org.springframework.batch.core.step.tasklet.MethodInvokingTaskletAdapter">
    		<property name="targetObject">
        		<bean class="org.company.NewsletterGenerator"/>
    		</property>
    		<property name="targetMethod" value="launchNewsletter" />
	</bean>

It seems like it works but just wondered if this is the best way. I have this separated from my web application right now and I've been thinking if I should incorporate it. The only thing I thought of is that the application is on a load-balancer so if the scheduler goes off I don't want this triggering on each server, I just want it to execute on one of them.

Thanks