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As KFS was developed, there was no way for us to know how to parse all of the various data files which come in from banks, vendors, credit card companies, travel agencies, and departments. Because of that, there was a preference to build XML abstractions of the files which KFS would pull in. However, a lot of files which a financial system has to deal with are flat files. Because of that, an institutional partner created an XML-configurable flat file parser, which you can read all about.
Batch Container
The original KFS Batch Step Runner would start up, load the application, and shut down - once per step. Over the course of a nighly batch run, the add-on time of that could easily tack half an hour on to the batch window. To deal with that, partner schools developed and contributed a Batch Container, which starts up once and runs all jobs in a batch run, using semaphores to notify it when it should run steps. Read more about it here.
Test Batch Jobs
Test Batch Jobs - jobs which are useful for development or testing but not for production - are documented in detail here.
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