Scheduled Tasks for Web Applications

Question

What are the different approaches for creating scheduled tasks for web applications, with or without a separate web/desktop application?

Answer 1

If we're talking Microsoft platform, then I'd always develop a separate Windows Service to handle such batch tasks.

You can always reference the same assemblies that are being used by your web application to avoid any nasty code duplication.

Answer 2

Jeff discussed this on the Stack Overflow blog - https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/easy-background-tasks-in-aspnet/

Basically, Jeff proposed using the CacheItemRemovedCallback as a timer for calling certain tasks.

I personally believe that automated tasks should be handled as a service, a Windows scheduled task, or a job in SQL Server.

Under Linux, checkout cron.