Defining special purpose threads for specific administration requests

You can specify one or more special purpose threads for a class of administration requests or for a specific administration request. An administration request's "class" is the request's time frame: immediate or interval.

The administration process has the following types of threads:

  • General purpose threads defined in the Maximum number of threads field on the Server Tasks - Administration Process tab of the Server document. You can specify 3 - 10 general purpose threads.
  • Special purpose threads that you define using NOTES.INI settings. The administration process can support a maximum of ten threads that are general purpose threads, special purpose threads, or a combination of the two. Special purpose threads only process immediate or interval requests. For example, if a special purpose thread is an immediate thread, then it only processes immediate requests.
  • One request dispatcher thread that the Administration Process uses to dispatch the administration process requests. You cannot set or modify this thread.
  • One polling thread for mail policy processing. You cannot set or modify this thread.

The special purpose threads are added to the existing general threads that are already defined. Use the following NOTES.INI settings to specify the number of special purpose threads.

ADMINP_IMMEDIATE_THREAD=X
ADMINP_INTERVAL_THREAD=X

where X is the number of special purpose threads.

Special purpose threads are not available for daily, delayed or batched administration process requests.

The option to add special purpose threads is checked only when the administration process starts up.

When a request is received for processing, the administration process checks to see if the request can be processed by one of the general purpose threads defined in the Server document. If it can be processed by a general purpose thread, the request is assigned to one of the available threads. If it cannot be processed by one of the general purpose threads, the administration process checks to see if the request qualifies to be processed by a special purpose thread defined in the NOTES.INI file. (Special purpose threads are immediate threads or interval threads; therefore, they only process immediate or interval administration process requests.) If the request qualifies, it is assigned to a special purpose thread. If the request does not qualify, the request is queued for processing at a later time by either a general purpose thread or a special purpose thread according to which has become available. Of course, in order to be processed by the special purpose thread, the request must qualify to be processed by that thread.