Loading section...

Schedules: Cron, Interval, Event

Concepts covered: paScheduleTypes, paCatchupMode

Every DAG has a schedule. The schedule decides when a run starts. Three forms cover almost every production case: cron expressions for repeated wall-clock times, intervals for relative cadences (every fifteen minutes, every hour), and event triggers for runs that start when something external happens. A modern orchestrator supports all three, and the right choice depends on the source's behavior, not on engineer preference. Cron Expressions A cron expression is five fields that name a recurring time. The fields are minute, hour, day of month, month, and day of week. The expression `0 2 * * *` means 'minute zero of hour two of every day of every month, regardless of weekday', which is 2am every night. Cron expressions are dense and easy to misread; production teams paste them through valida

About This Interactive Section

This section is part of the Orchestration and Dependencies: Intermediate lesson on DataDriven, a free data engineering interview prep platform. Each section includes explanations, worked examples, and hands-on code challenges that execute in real time. SQL queries run against a live PostgreSQL database. Python runs in a sandboxed Docker container. Data modeling problems validate against interactive schema canvases. All content is framed around what data engineering interviewers actually test at companies like Meta, Google, Amazon, Netflix, Stripe, and Databricks.

How DataDriven Lessons Work

DataDriven combines four interview rounds (SQL, Python, Data Modeling, Pipeline Architecture) with adaptive difficulty and spaced repetition. Easy problems get harder as you improve. Weak concepts resurface until you master them. Your readiness score tracks progress across every topic interviewers test. Every lesson section ends with problems you solve by writing and running real code, not by picking multiple-choice answers.