Infinite loop or repetitive run for daemon

Which is the better to write a "daemon" based on oracle schedules:

1. The one that is run once and then is in infinite loop and sleeps for 5 seconds if there is nothing to do (to not waste CPU cycles).

2. The one that is started, checked if it is something to 开发者_StackOverflowdo. If not - ends execution and is run after 5 seconds by schedule.

Which one and why do you prefer? Or may be it is some another implementation?

I personally prefer an infinite loop to a scheduled task. With an infinite loop you can see a broader cross-activation overview - Eg You can count number of failures in a row/similar very easily and add error-recovery.

A scheduled task is effectively stateless unless you manually give it state (File/Db/???)

It sounds like you might want to look at using an a queue to do the processing rather than a schedule job. The process can block on the queue waiting for new work.