10.2. Driving the flow of a job

Not all jobs are linear: their steps don’t always execute one after the other in a simple sequence. Jobs can take multiple paths: depending on the result of a step, you can choose to execute one step or another. In our new version of the import products job, the job executes an optional step to generate a report if something goes wrong in the read-write step.

This section covers how Spring Batch lets you configure such nonlinear jobs. By the end of this section, you’ll know how to escape the simple linear job scenario and create complex flows for your jobs.