This is the main interface of a Quartz Scheduler.

A Scheduler maintains a registery of JobDetail s and Trigger s. Once registered, the Scheduler is responible for executing Job s when their associated Trigger s fire (when their scheduled time arrives).

Scheduler instances are produced by a SchedulerFactory . A scheduler that has already been created/initialized can be found and used through the same factory that produced it. After a Scheduler has been created, it is in "stand-by" mode, and must have its start() method called before it will fire any Jobs.

Job s are to be created by the 'client program', by defining a class that implements the Job interface. JobDetail objects are then created (also by the client) to define a individual instances of the Job. JobDetail instances can then be registered with the Scheduler via the scheduleJob(JobDetail, Trigger) or addJob(JobDetail, boolean) method.

Trigger s can then be defined to fire individual Job instances based on given schedules. SimpleTrigger s are most useful for one-time firings, or firing at an exact moment in time, with N repeats with a given delay between them. CronTrigger s allow scheduling based on time of day, day of week, day of month, and month of year.

Job s and Trigger s have a name and group associated with them, which should uniquely identify them within a single Scheduler . The 'group' feature may be useful for creating logical groupings or categorizations of Jobs s and Triggerss. If you don't have need for assigning a group to a given Jobs of Triggers, then you can use the DEFAULT_GROUP constant defined on this interface.

Stored Job s can also be 'manually' triggered through the use of the triggerJob(String jobName, String jobGroup) function.

Client programs may also be interested in the 'listener' interfaces that are available from Quartz. The JobListener interface provides notifications of Job executions. The TriggerListener interface provides notifications of Trigger firings. The SchedulerListener interface provides notifications of Scheduler events and errors.

The setup/configuration of a Scheduler instance is very customizable. Please consult the documentation distributed with Quartz.