There are reporting programs and data updating programs that need to run either periodically, or on an ad hoc basis. These programs, which run in the background while users continue to work on other tasks are run using the Concurrent Processing architecture. Concurrent Processing is an Oracle E-Business Suite feature that allows these non–interactive and potentially long-running functions to be executed efficiently alongside interactive operations on a specialized server, the Concurrent Processing Server.
Processes that run on the Concurrent Processing server are called Concurrent Requests.
When you submit such a request, either through HTML-based or Forms-based applications, a row is inserted into a database table specifying the program to be run. A Concurrent Manager then reads the applicable requests in the table, and starts the associated concurrent program.
Read more...
