Scheduling actions to occur on a periodic basis

You can schedule actions to occur on a periodic basis by specifying an element's concurrency.

When you specify an element as active in the Features window, the Execution Scheme section expands to include Activation Policy settings. You can then specify the activation policy as Asynchronous or Periodic. If you use Periodic, you can then specify both the activation period and offset (from zero) for the element.

You can set a schedule for any element whose concurrency is set to active, and whose activation policy is set to Periodic.

The scheduling of actions uses the scheduling capabilities provided by the operating system, or the operating system timer if there are no direct scheduling capabilities.

Using periodic operations

In addition to the ability to schedule active elements (which can be classes, implicit objects, or files), you can define periodic operations. These are individual operations that you can schedule just as you would an active element.