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c#asp.netscheduled-tasksglobal-asaxquartz.net
Buck3y3
Buck3y3

Reputation: 136

running timer from global.asax vs quartz.net

I am developing a asp.net site that needs hit a few social media sites daily for blanket friend/follower data. I have chosen arvixe business class as my hosting. In the future if we grow, I'd love to get onto a dedicated server and run a windows service, however since that is not in the cards at this point I need another reliable way of running scheduled tasks. I am familiar with running a thread timer from the app_code(global.aspx). However the app pool recycling will cause some problems with the timer. I have never used task scheduling like quartz but have read a lot about it on stackoverflow. I was looking for some advise as to how to approach my goal. One big problem I have using either method is that I will need the crawler threads to sleep for up to an hour regularly due to api call limits. My first thoughts were to use the db to save the starting and ending of a job. When the app pool recycles I would clear out any parts not completed and only start parts that do not have a record of running on that day. What do the experts here think? any good links to sample architecture of this type of scheduling?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1508

Answers (4)

tinonetic
tinonetic

Reputation: 8034

If you are language-agnostic and don't mind writing your "job-activation-script" in your favourite, Linux-supported language...

One solution that has worked very well for me is:

  1. Getting relatively cheap, stable Linux hosting(from reputable companies),
  2. Creating a WCF service on your .Net hosted platform that will contain the logic you want to run regularly (RESTfully or SOAP or XMLRPC... whichever suits you),
  3. Handling the calls through your Linux hosted cron jobs, written in your language of choice(I use PHP).

Working very well, like I said. No VPS expense,configurable and externally activated. I have one central place where my jobs are activated, with 99 to 100% uptime(never had any failures).

Upvotes: 0

jvilalta
jvilalta

Reputation: 6789

As long as you use a persistent job store (like a database) and you write and schedule your jobs so that they can handle things like being killed half way through, having IIS recycle your process is not that big a deal.

The bigger issue is that IIS shuts your site down if it doesn't have traffic. If you can keep your site up, then just make sure you set the misfire policy appropriately and that your jobs store any state data needed to pick up where they left off, you should be able to pull it off.

Upvotes: 0

Jay
Jay

Reputation: 6294

Somewhat along the lines of Bryan's post;

Find a spare computer.

Instead of allowing DB access have it call up a web service on your site. This service call should be the initiator of the process you are trying to do. Don't try to put params into it, just something like "StartProcess()" should work fine.

As far as going to sleep and resuming later take a look at Workflow Foundation. There are some nice built in features to persist state.

Don't expose your DB to the outside world, instead expose that page or web service and wraps some security around that. WCF has some nice built in security features for that.

The best part is when you decide to move off, you can keep your web service and have it called from a Windows Service in the same manner.

Upvotes: 0

Bryan Crosby
Bryan Crosby

Reputation: 6554

It doesn't really matter what method you use, whether you roll your own or use Quartz. You are at the mercy of ASP.NET/IIS because that's where you want to host it.

Do you have a spare computer laying around that can just run a scheduled task and upload data to a hosted database? To be honest, it's possibly safer (depending on your use case) to just do it that way then try to run a scheduler in ASP.NET.

Upvotes: 1

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