GL2 Feature Suggestion - Scheduling

Reading the recent comments on Weather Block update hangs due to unavailability of the NOAA service sparked this idea.

It would be useful if the GL2 engine could provide an external scheduling facility. I\'m thinking of a function that\'s called from cron/task scheduler via a standalone PHP executable, say, every five minutes.

GL2 plugins could register a function with this mechanism though an API that permits specification of frequency e.g. 0-11 executions per hour and offset from the hour, in five minute increments, to balance server load.

This would prove extremely useful for things like the Weather Block metar updates, RDF feed processing etc. while separating such data processing from page hits.

Another useful extension to the API would be provision for a unix-style \"cron\" time specification. This could be used to schedule events at a particular, five minute precision, intervals. Scheduled database dumps instantly spring to mind for this feature.

Regards,
Neil Darlow M.Sc.