Batch Jobs()

Reji Varghese

Hi there,
When i go to the Administration tab > Server Operations > Abort, i see something like this.
[HTML]"Batch Jobs() default 5h 57m 8.748s"[/HTML]
Now, when i do a "iwstat" or do an "iwfreeze", i get the following output :
[HTML]
Store Status
default Running
store1 Running
store2 Running
workflow Running

ID Thread User Duration Store Operation
0x22114 0x116c SYSTEM 0.000 - GetServerStatus
0x203c9 0x10fc - 5822.279 default Batch Jobs

Store: default
Batch Jobs (running):
Queued User Job Object ID
[Thu Sep 10 23:00:59 2009] domain\username t) 0x000022500000000000028100
[Sun Sep 13 21:37:09 2009] domain\username ft) 0x000022500000000000003f00
[Mon Sep 14 22:34:36 2009] domain\username Cleanup Destroyed Branch test_cms_DR (5 areas left) 0x000022500000000002573cb4

Store: store1
Batch Jobs (running):
Queued User Job Object ID
[Mon Sep 14 22:35:38 2009] domain\username ) 0x00002250000000000000012a
[Mon Sep 14 22:36:07 2009] domain\username ) 0x000022500000000000042c5e

Cache Active Dirty To Purge Available
default 50298 0 0
marsh 38412 0 22
mhrs 189 0 0
workflow 519 0 0
Total 89418 0 22 10582

Minutes Thruput Avg op Load
1 2 0.0115 0.02
15 1 0.0105 0.01
60 1 0.0085 0.00
480 2 1.1292 2.25
1440 1 0.6171 0.61
1479 1 0.6063 0.60

[/HTML]

I believe that these batch jobs might have started after i deleted some branches a week ago.

Could someone tell me what exactly is this doing ?
How long would it take for the batch job to complete ?
What does the "Dirty" & "To Purge" values indicate ?

This is not the first time i have come across this batch jobs. Earlier on our DEV server, these kind of batch jobs didnt allow Freeze'ing a store. So, i had to forcefully kill these batch jobs by deleting the files "BatchJob" and "BatchJobsQueue" from the folder \iw-store\default\FORMAT\. I dont know if my act would have any impact on the store. It's ok since that was a DEV server, this time its Prod. So, dont want to take chance.

Couldnt find more details in the PDF's or on devnet.

Thanks in advance.