Background Job Queues
Some analyses in Arx can take a while to run. Instead of blocking the browser, these are processed in the background by a job queue. You can close the tab or even log out; jobs keep running on the server and the results will be waiting for you when you return.
The Job Queues page gives you an overview of your recent jobs: their status (queued, running, done, failed), elapsed time, and a direct link to reopen the results.
A bell icon in the navbar shows a count of your active jobs and provides quick access to the Job Queues page.
Tools that use background jobs
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
| BLAST Search | BLAST searches against large genome sets run asynchronously. Results are stored and can be reopened at any time. |
| Phylogenetic Trees | Genome-similarity (ANI) and core-genome (OrthoFinder) trees are computed in the background. |
| Genome Similarity (ANI) | Pairwise ANI calculations run as background jobs and include a heatmap and dendrogram view. |
| Gene Trait Matching | Gene trait matching (including Scoary-2) runs as a background job. Results are stored and include an interactive viewer. |
Job management
Each job card shows:
- Status: queued, running, done, failed, or cancelled
- Elapsed time: how long the job has been running or took to complete
- Title: automatically generated from your input; can be renamed
You can also:
- Pin a job to keep it visible at the top of the list
- Cancel a running job
- Wipe a completed job to free up storage
Configuration
The job queue is powered by Huey with Redis as the message broker. Redis is a fast in-memory data store used here to pass jobs between the web server and the background workers. In the default single-container setup, Redis is started automatically; no separate installation is needed.
| Setting | Environment variable | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Number of parallel workers | HUEY_WORKERS |
4 |
| Redis connection | REDIS_URL / REDIS_HOST / REDIS_PORT |
built-in Redis |
Increase HUEY_WORKERS if you expect many concurrent users or want multiple jobs to run in parallel. See Environment Configuration for the full list of Redis and queue settings.