Comparisons

Comparisons

How does Chronos compare to existing solutions?

vs ScheduledExecutorService

Java's standard ScheduledExecutorService (SES) is the baseline.

Feature	ScheduledExecutorService	Chronos
Dependencies	None (JDK)	None (Chronos is deps-free)
Cron Support	❌ No	✅ Yes (Unix-style)
One-Shot	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Fixed Rate	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Resilience	❌ Manual try/catch	✅ Built-in Policies & Retries
Jitter	❌ Manual calculation	✅ Built-in
Observability	❌ None	✅ Listeners & Metrics

Verdict: Use Chronos if you need Cron schedules or built-in resilience without writing boilerplate wrappers around SES.

vs Quartz

Quartz is the industry heavyweight for Java scheduling.

Feature	Quartz	Chronos
Dependencies	Heavy (SLF4J, c3p0, etc.)	Zero
Complexity	High (JobDetails, Triggers, Contexts)	Low (Runnables)
Persistence	✅ JDBC / DB Clustering	❌ In-Memory Only
Clustering	✅ Yes	❌ No (Single Node)
Cron	✅ Yes (Specific syntax)	✅ Yes (Standard Unix)

Verdict: Use Quartz if you need database persistence, clustering across multiple nodes, or distributed transaction support. Use Chronos for single-node applications, microservices, or tools where lightweight, in-memory scheduling is preferred.