Can polling nodes "overlap"?

Questions
1

hi all, does n8n prevent polling nodes from “overlapping” if a poll takes too much time, or not?

example:

  • node starts to poll, with interval “every minute”
  • poll takes longer than expected (e.g. Okta has an API rate limit, so the API can tell you to “back off” for 30 seconds or more maybe)
  • the poll requires to execute a few more requests for paging, which might take again some time
  • now the original “minute” is over, and n8n would by default trigger a new poll
    • but the previously triggered polling run is NOT done yet

can that happen? yes it is a pretty remote scenario, but given that a lost log item can lead to data inconsistency I would rather eliminate that possibility at the data layer than at the human layer (read: a ticket is being created … :wink: ).

and yes, VERY remote. still.

2

yeah n8n does prevent this - each polling trigger maintains its own execution queue and wont start a new poll until the previous one finishes. so if your Okta poll takes 90 seconds due to rate limiting, the next scheduled poll will just wait until that ones done before starting.

you can see this behavior if you check the execution history - youll notice gaps in the schedule when a poll runs long. should be safe from overlapping executions.

3

5 years later. love it :rofl:

thanks!