A batch job is a station job that is managed and launched (sent to the station’s JobService) by the station’s BatchJobService. The BatchJobService and batch jobs replace job control functions that were formerly done (exclusively) by the ProvisioningService in early NiagaraAX releases (AX-3.1 and AX-3.2).

At the time of this document, only NiagaraNetwork provisioning uses batch jobs. However, at some future time other network drivers may also offer provisioning using batch jobs.

A job is used to manage a task performed by the station. It runs asynchronously in the background, but provides user visibility. Provisioning is done entirely with “batch jobs”, which requires the Supervisor to have the BatchJobService (in addition to the “core” JobService). The BatchJobService provides additional job control functions to launch and manage jobs.

Apart from provisioning, other station services and drivers also perform jobs, all of which can be viewed in the station’s JobService. However, unlike other jobs, all provisioning (batch) jobs are persistent across a station restart. Also, provisioning provides specialized views for building and administering provisioning batch jobs.

A “snapshot” of installed software on a remote host running a station, which gets built/updated when you access the “Software” extension under a NiagaraStation component. This snapshot is used by Niagara provisioning when performing queries and installation of software.

Used to describe the catalog of available software installable files, such as modules (.jars) or Niagara distribution files (.dists) under the !sw directory of a NiagaraAX workstation or Supervisor.