ChunkListener onError method not invoked for open() and close() methods of ItemReader and ItemWriter about jsr352

[chengfang]

Thanks for your feedback. Section 11.8 Chunk with Listeners of the spec v1.0 Maintenance Release covers your use case in general with detailed flows.

A chunk-type step consists of multiple chunks, and ChunkListener is for these smaller chunks, not for the entire step. When ItemReader.open() is called at the beginning of the step, we haven't come to any chunk yet, why should the ChunkListener be called?

Both javax.batch.api.chunk.listener.ChunkListener#beforeChunk and afterChunk javadoc says that "This method is invoked in the same transaction as the chunk processing." So I would assume the same would apply to onError to mean that chunk transaction here refers to the actual unit of work of chunk processing.

[chengfang]

You may want to present your issue to batch spec group discussion for more perspectives and suggestions:
https://java.net/projects/jbatch/lists/public/archive

[chengfang]

Bug 4548 - Add onError to ChunkListener provides some background:
https://java.net/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=4548

[mariok]

Thanks for your explanations and for providing further links/information. I agree with your point of view concerning the call of the ChunkListener.onError() method. I will open a ticket for BatchEE accordingly.

BTW, I think that there is a similar topic concerning the error-processing on step-level. As far as I have seen, JBeret does not call the StepListener.afterStep() method, if an exception is thrown during the step-processing. In the JBatch RI / BatchEE, it seems that the afterStep() method is called even if an exception occurred inside the step. This applies to Chunk- and Batchlet-Steps. The spec also is not very clear about this topic:

The afterStep method receives control after a step execution ends.

Following the logic of ChunkListener.afterChunk(), the afterStep() method should not be called in case of exceptions. But again, this makes it impossible to implement some generic error-processing in form of listeners on step-level.

From my point of view, a top-level error-handling for steps would be great (e.g. in form of a StepListener.onError() method). This would cover exceptions during batchlet-processing as well as exceptions inside chunk-steps, which occur outside of the single chunks (e.g. in the open() and close() methods). I will present this topic for discussion on the spec mailing list together with the original issue. Thanks for your help so far.

[chengfang]

Sounds good. Let's continue the discussion on batch spec list.

[chengfang]

batch spec discussion:
https://java.net/projects/jbatch/lists/public/archive/2014-12/message/3