[Question] How does pg-boss ensure fair or random job selection for identical schedules?

[Yaman-kumarsahu]

We have a use case where approximately 500 jobs are scheduled to start at the same time. For fairness, we prefer that job execution is not strictly ordered, but instead that instances are picked in a randomized way.

We’ve observed that jobs are currently triggered in a seemingly random order, which works well for our use case, and we’d like to preserve this behavior.

Is this randomness an intentional and stable part of pg-boss’s scheduling behavior, or could it change in future releases?

Additionally, is there a supported or recommended way to explicitly enforce randomized or fair job selection when many jobs share the same schedule?

[timgit]

Do you mean ordered by queue name? There's no order by expression on the schedule fetch, if that's what you're referring to. This isn't explicitly a guarantee on return order or a guarantee it will be random, either.