Jobs have a blocking job attribute whose semantic is confusing. Technically, there is no difference between a blocking (.i.e synchronous) and a non-blocking (asynchronous) job. The difference is only in the client code that submits the job (JPPFClient.submitJob() method).

We consider that a job should be submissible either synchronously or asynchronously, regardless of its state

To this effect, we propose to deprecate the blocking job attribute in JPPFJob, as well as the submitJob() method in JPPFClient, and add the submit(JPPFJob) and submitAsync(JPPFJob) methods to JPPFClient instead, to fullfill the sme functionality.

Also, the deprecated members should not be removed before the next major version (v7.0) or even later, to ensure that users have plenty of advance warnings and the time to adjust their applications. In other words, this should be a long-term deprecation.

Care should also be taken to adapt the J2EE/JCA connector to take this into account.