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Block Controller Method while already running

I have a controller which returns a large json object. If this object does not exist, it will generate and return it afterwards. The generation takes about 5 seconds, and if the client sent the request multiple times, the object gets generated with x-times the children. So my question is: Is there a way to block the second request, until the first one finished, independent who sent the request?
Normally I would do it with a Singleton, but because I am having scoped services, singleton does not work here

Warning: this is very oppinionated and maybe not suitable for Stack Overflow, but here it is anyway
Although I'll provide no code... when things take a while to generate, you don't usually spend that time directly in controller code, but do something like "start a background task to generate the result, and provide a "task id", which can be queried on another different call).
So, my preferred course of action for this would be having two different controller actions:
Generate, which creates the background job, assigns it some id, and returns the id
GetResult, to which you pass the task id, and returns either different error codes for "job id doesn't exist", "job id isn't finished", or a 200 with the result.
This way, your clients will need to call both, however, in Generate, you can check if the job is already being created and return an existing job id.
This of course moves the need to "retry and check" to your client: in exchange, you don't leave the connection to the server opened during those 5 seconds (which could potentially be multiplied by a number of clients) and return fast.
Otherwise, if you don't care about having your clients wait for a response during those 5 seconds, you could do a simple:
if(resultDoesntExist) {
resultDoesntExist = false; // You can use locks for the boolean setters or Interlocked instead of just setting a member
resultIsBeingGenerated = true;
generateResult(); // <-- this is what takes 5 seconds
resultIsBeingGenerated = false;
}
while(resultIsBeingGenerated) { await Task.Delay(10); } // <-- other clients will wait here
var result = getResult(); // <-- this should be fast once the result is already created
return result;
note: those booleans and the actual loop could be on the controller, or on the service, or wherever you see fit: just be wary of making them thread-safe in however method you see appropriate
So you basically make other clients wait till the first one generates the result, with "almost" no CPU load on the server... however with a connection open and a thread from the threadpool used, so I just DO NOT recommend this :-)
PS: #Leaky solution above is also good, but it also shifts the responsability to retry to the client, and if you are going to do that, I'd probably go directly with a "background job id", instead of having the first (the one that generates the result) one take 5 seconds. IMO, if it can be avoided, no API action should ever take 5 seconds to return :-)

Do you have an example for Interlocked.CompareExchange?
Sure. I'm definitely not the most knowledgeable person when it comes to multi-threading stuff, but this is quite simple (as you might know, Interlocked has no support for bool, so it's customary to represent it with an integral type):
public class QueryStatus
{
private static int _flag;
// Returns false if the query has already started.
public bool TrySetStarted()
=> Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _flag, 1, 0) == 0;
public void SetFinished()
=> Interlocked.Exchange(ref _flag, 0);
}
I think it's the safest if you use it like this, with a 'Try' method, which tries to set the value and tells you if it was already set, in an atomic way.
Besides simply adding this (I mean just the field and the methods) to your existing component, you can also use it as a separate component, injected from the IOC container as scoped. Or even injected as a singleton, and then you don't have to use a static field.
Storing state like this should be good for as long as the application is running, but if the hosted application is recycled due to inactivity, it's obviously lost. Though, that won't happen while a request is still processing, and definitely won't happen in 5 seconds.
(And if you wanted to synchronize between app service instances, you could 'quickly' save a flag to the database, in a transaction with proper isolation level set. Or use e.g. Azure Redis Cache.)
Example solution
As Kit noted, rightly so, I didn't provide a full solution above.
So, a crude implementation could go like this:
public class SomeQueryService : ISomeQueryService
{
private static int _hasStartedFlag;
private static bool TrySetStarted()
=> Interlocked.CompareExchange(ref _hasStartedFlag, 1, 0) == 0;
private static void SetFinished()
=> Interlocked.Exchange(ref _hasStartedFlag, 0);
public async Task<(bool couldExecute, object result)> TryExecute()
{
if (!TrySetStarted())
return (couldExecute: false, result: null);
// Safely execute long query.
SetFinished();
return (couldExecute: true, result: result);
}
}
// In the controller, obviously
[HttpGet()]
public async Task<IActionResult> DoLongQuery([FromServices] ISomeQueryService someQueryService)
{
var (couldExecute, result) = await someQueryService.TryExecute();
if (!couldExecute)
{
return new ObjectResult(new ProblemDetails
{
Status = StatusCodes.Status503ServiceUnavailable,
Title = "Another request has already started. Try again later.",
Type = "https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-6.6.4"
})
{ StatusCode = StatusCodes.Status503ServiceUnavailable };
}
return Ok(result);
}
Of course possibly you'd want to extract the 'blocking' logic from the controller action into somewhere else, for example an action filter. In that case the flag should also go into a separate component that could be shared between the query service and the filter.
General use action filter
I felt bad about my inelegant solution above, and I realized that this problem can be generalized into basically a connection number limiter on an endpoint.
I wrote this small action filter that can be applied to any endpoint (multiple endpoints), and it accepts the number of allowed connections:
[AttributeUsage(AttributeTargets.Method, AllowMultiple = false)]
public class ConcurrencyLimiterAttribute : ActionFilterAttribute
{
private readonly int _allowedConnections;
private static readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, int> _connections = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, int>();
public ConcurrencyLimiterAttribute(int allowedConnections = 1)
=> _allowedConnections = allowedConnections;
public override async Task OnActionExecutionAsync(ActionExecutingContext context, ActionExecutionDelegate next)
{
var key = context.HttpContext.Request.Path;
if (_connections.AddOrUpdate(key, 1, (k, v) => ++v) > _allowedConnections)
{
Close(withError: true);
return;
}
try
{
await next();
}
finally
{
Close();
}
void Close(bool withError = false)
{
if (withError)
{
context.Result = new ObjectResult(new ProblemDetails
{
Status = StatusCodes.Status503ServiceUnavailable,
Title = $"Maximum {_allowedConnections} simultaneous connections are allowed. Try again later.",
Type = "https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7231#section-6.6.4"
})
{ StatusCode = StatusCodes.Status503ServiceUnavailable };
}
_connections.AddOrUpdate(key, 0, (k, v) => --v);
}
}
}

Issue in asynchronous API calls from SQLCLR

In a nutshell, I need to notify a Web API service from SQL Server asynchronously as and when there are changes in a particular table.
To achieve the above, I have created a SQLCLR stored procedure which contains the asynchronous API call to notify the service. The SQLCLR stored procedure is called via a trigger as and when there is an insert into a table called Table1. The main challenge here is API has to read data from the same table (Table1).
If I use HttpWebRequest.GetResponse() which is the synchronous version, the entire operation is getting locked out due to the implicit lock of the insert trigger. To avoid this, I have used HttpWebRequest.GetResponseAsync() method which calls the API and doesn't wait for the response. So it fires the API request and the program control moves on so the trigger transaction doesn't hold any lock(s) on table1 and the API was able to read data from table1.
Now I have to implement an error notification mechanism as and when there are failures (like unable to connect to remote server) and I need to send an email to the admin team. I have wrote the mail composition logic inside the catch() block. If I proceed with the above HttpWebRequest.GetResponseAsync().Result method, the entire operation becomes synchronous and it locks the entire operation.
If I use the BeginGetResponse() and EndGetResponse() method implementation suggested in Microsoft documents and run the SQLCLR stored procedure, SQL Server hangs without any information, why? What am I doing wrong here? Why does the RespCallback() method not get executed?
Sharing the SQLCLR code snippets below.
public class RequestState
{
// This class stores the State of the request.
// const int BUFFER_SIZE = 1024;
// public StringBuilder requestData;
// public byte[] BufferRead;
public HttpWebRequest request;
public HttpWebResponse response;
// public Stream streamResponse;
public RequestState()
{
// BufferRead = new byte[BUFFER_SIZE];
// requestData = new StringBuilder("");
request = null;
// streamResponse = null;
}
}
public partial class StoredProcedures
{
private static SqlString _mailServer = null;
private static SqlString _port = null;
private static SqlString _fromAddress = null;
private static SqlString _toAddress = null;
private static SqlString _mailAcctUserName = null;
private static SqlString _decryptedPassword = null;
private static SqlString _subject = null;
private static string _mailContent = null;
private static int _portNo = 0;
public static ManualResetEvent allDone = new ManualResetEvent(false);
const int DefaultTimeout = 20000; // 50 seconds timeout
#region TimeOutCallBack
/// <summary>
/// Abort the request if the timer fires.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="state">request state</param>
/// <param name="timedOut">timeout status</param>
private static void TimeoutCallback(object state, bool timedOut)
{
if (timedOut)
{
HttpWebRequest request = state as HttpWebRequest;
if (request != null)
{
request.Abort();
SendNotifyErrorEmail(null, "The request got timedOut!,please check the API");
}
}
}
#endregion
#region APINotification
[SqlProcedure]
public static void Notify(SqlString weburl, SqlString username, SqlString password, SqlString connectionLimit, SqlString mailServer, SqlString port, SqlString fromAddress
, SqlString toAddress, SqlString mailAcctUserName, SqlString mailAcctPassword, SqlString subject)
{
_mailServer = mailServer;
_port = port;
_fromAddress = fromAddress;
_toAddress = toAddress;
_mailAcctUserName = mailAcctUserName;
_decryptedPassword = mailAcctPassword;
_subject = subject;
if (!(weburl.IsNull && username.IsNull && password.IsNull && connectionLimit.IsNull))
{
var url = Convert.ToString(weburl);
var uname = Convert.ToString(username);
var pass = Convert.ToString(password);
var connLimit = Convert.ToString(connectionLimit);
int conLimit = Convert.ToInt32(connLimit);
try
{
if (!(string.IsNullOrEmpty(url) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(uname) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(pass) && conLimit > 0))
{
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("Entered inside the notify method");
HttpWebRequest httpWebRequest = WebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
string encoded = Convert.ToBase64String(Encoding.GetEncoding("ISO-8859-1").GetBytes(uname + ":" + pass));
httpWebRequest.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + encoded);
httpWebRequest.Method = "POST";
httpWebRequest.ContentLength = 0;
httpWebRequest.ServicePoint.ConnectionLimit = conLimit;
// Create an instance of the RequestState and assign the previous myHttpWebRequest
// object to its request field.
RequestState requestState = new RequestState();
requestState.request = httpWebRequest;
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("before sending the notification");
//Start the asynchronous request.
IAsyncResult result =
(IAsyncResult)httpWebRequest.BeginGetResponse(new AsyncCallback(RespCallback), requestState);
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("after BeginGetResponse");
// this line implements the timeout, if there is a timeout, the callback fires and the request becomes aborted
ThreadPool.RegisterWaitForSingleObject(result.AsyncWaitHandle, new WaitOrTimerCallback(TimeoutCallback), requestState, DefaultTimeout, true);
//SqlContext.Pipe.Send("after RegisterWaitForSingleObject");
// The response came in the allowed time. The work processing will happen in the
// callback function.
allDone.WaitOne();
//SqlContext.Pipe.Send("after allDone.WaitOne();");
// Release the HttpWebResponse resource.
requestState.response.Close();
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("after requestState.response.Close()");
}
}
catch (Exception exception)
{
SqlContext.Pipe.Send(" Main Exception");
SqlContext.Pipe.Send(exception.Message.ToString());
//TODO: log the details in a error table
SendNotifyErrorEmail(exception, null);
}
}
}
#endregion
#region ResposnseCallBack
/// <summary>
/// asynchronous Httpresponse callback
/// </summary>
/// <param name="asynchronousResult"></param>
private static void RespCallback(IAsyncResult asynchronousResult)
{
try
{
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("Entering the respcallback");
// State of request is asynchronous.
RequestState httpRequestState = (RequestState)asynchronousResult.AsyncState;
HttpWebRequest currentHttpWebRequest = httpRequestState.request;
httpRequestState.response = (HttpWebResponse)currentHttpWebRequest.EndGetResponse(asynchronousResult);
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("exiting the respcallBack");
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
SqlContext.Pipe.Send("exception in the respcallBack");
SendNotifyErrorEmail(ex, null);
}
allDone.Set();
}
#endregion
}
One alternative approach for above is using SQL Server Service Broker which has the queuing mechanism which will help us to implement asynchronous triggers. But do we have any solution for the above situation? Am I doing anything wrong in an approach perspective? Please guide me.

There are a couple of things that stand out as possible issues:
Wouldn't the call to allDone.WaitOne(); block until a response is received anyway, negating the need / use of all this async stuff?
Even if this does work, are you testing this in a single session? You have several static member (class-level) variables, such as public static ManualResetEvent allDone, that are shared across all sessions. SQLCLR uses a shared App Domain (App Domains are per Database / per Assembly owner). Hence multiple sessions will over-write each other's values of these shared static variables. That is very dangerous (hence why non-readonly static variables are only allowed in UNSAFE Assemblies). This model only works if you can guarantee a single caller at any given moment.
Beyond any SQLCLR technicalities, I am not sure that this is a good model even if you do manage to get past this particular issue.
A better, safer model would be to:
create a queue table to log these changes. you typically only need the key columns and a timestamp (DATETIME or DATETIME2, not the TIMESTAMP datatype).
have the trigger log the current time and rows modified into the queue table
create a stored procedure that takes items from the queue, starting with the oldest records, processes them (which can definitely be calling your SQLCLR stored procedure to do the web server call, but no need for it to be async, so remove that stuff and set the Assembly back to EXTERNAL_ACCESS since you don't need/want UNSAFE).
Do this in a transaction so that the records are not fully removed from the queue table if the "processing" fails. Sometimes using the OUTPUT clause with DELETE to reserve rows that you are working on into a local temp table helps.
Process multiple records at a time, even if calling the SQLCLR stored procedure needs to be done on a per-row basis.
create a SQL Server agent job to execute the stored procedure every minute (or less depending on need)
Minor issues:
the pattern of copying input parameters into static variables (e.g. _mailServer = mailServer;) is pointless at best, and error-prone regardless due to not being thread-safe. remember, static variables are shared across all sessions, so any concurrent sessions will be overwriting the previous values, hence ensure race conditions. Please remove all of the variables with names starting with an underscore.
the pattern of using Convert.To... is also unnecessary and a slight hit to performance. All Sql* types have a Value property that returns the expected .NET type. Hence, you only need: string url = weburl.Value;
there is no need to use incorrect datatypes that require conversion later on. Meaning, rather than using SqlString for connectionLimit, instead use SqlInt32 and then you can simply do int connLimit = connectionLimit.Value;
You probably don't need to do the security manually (i.e. httpWebRequest.Headers.Add("Authorization", "Basic " + encoded);). I am pretty sure you can just create a new NetworkCredential using uname and pass and assign that to the request.

Hi there (and Happy New Year) :)!
A couple of things:
If you can, stay away from triggers! They can cause a lot of unexpected side effects, especially if you use them for business logic. What I mean with that, is that they are good for auditing purposes, but apart from that I try and avoid them like the plague.
So, if you do not use triggers, how do you know when something is inserted? Well, I hope that your inserts happen through stored procedures, and are not direct inserts in the table(s). If you use stored procedures you can have a procedure which is doing your logic, and that procedure is called from the procedure which does the insert.
Back to your question. I don't really have an answer to the specifics, but I would stay away from using SQLCLR in this case (sidenote: I am a BIG proponent of SQLCLR, and I have implemented a lot of SQLCLR processes which are doing something similar to what you do, so I don't say this because I do not like SQLCLR).
In your case, I would look at either use Change Notifications, or as you mention in your post - Service Broker. Be aware that with SSB you can run into performance issues (latches, locks, etc.) if your system is highly volatile (+2,000 tx/sec). At least that is what we experienced.

Shared object among different requests

I'm working with .NET 3.5 with a simple handler for http requests. Right now, on each http request my handler opens a tcp connection with 3 remote servers in order to receive some information from them. Then closes the sockets and writes the server status back to Context.Response.
However, I would prefer to have a separate object that every 5 minutes connects to the remote servers via tcp, gets the information and keeps it. So the HttpRequest, on each request would be much faster just asking this object for the information.
So my questions here are, how to keep a shared global object in memory all the time that can also "wake" an do those tcp connections even when no http requests are coming and have the object accesible to the http request handler.

A service may be overkill for this.
You can create a global object in your application start and have it create a background thread that does the query every 5 minutes. Take the response (or what you process from the response) and put it into a separate class, creating a new instance of that class with each response, and use System.Threading.Interlocked.Exchange to replace a static instance each time the response is retrieved. When you want to look the the response, simply copy a reference the static instance to a stack reference and you will have the most recent data.
Keep in mind, however, that ASP.NET will kill your application whenever there are no requests for a certain amount of time (idle time), so your application will stop and restart, causing your global object to get destroyed and recreated.
You may read elsewhere that you can't or shouldn't do background stuff in ASP.NET, but that's not true--you just have to understand the implications. I have similar code to the following example working on an ASP.NET site that handles over 1000 req/sec peak (across multiple servers).
For example, in global.asax.cs:
public class BackgroundResult
{
public string Response; // for simplicity, just use a public field for this example--for a real implementation, public fields are probably bad
}
class BackgroundQuery
{
private BackgroundResult _result; // interlocked
private readonly Thread _thread;
public BackgroundQuery()
{
_thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(BackgroundThread));
_thread.IsBackground = true; // allow the application to shut down without errors even while this thread is still running
_thread.Name = "Background Query Thread";
_thread.Start();
// maybe you want to get the first result here immediately?? Otherwise, the first result may not be available for a bit
}
/// <summary>
/// Gets the latest result. Note that the result could change at any time, so do expect to reference this directly and get the same object back every time--for example, if you write code like: if (LatestResult.IsFoo) { LatestResult.Bar }, the object returned to check IsFoo could be different from the one used to get the Bar property.
/// </summary>
public BackgroundResult LatestResult { get { return _result; } }
private void BackgroundThread()
{
try
{
while (true)
{
try
{
HttpWebRequest request = (HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create("http://example.com/samplepath?query=query");
request.Method = "GET";
using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse())
{
using (StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream(), System.Text.Encoding.UTF8))
{
// get what I need here (just the entire contents as a string for this example)
string result = reader.ReadToEnd();
// put it into the results
BackgroundResult backgroundResult = new BackgroundResult { Response = result };
System.Threading.Interlocked.Exchange(ref _result, backgroundResult);
}
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// the request failed--cath here and notify us somehow, but keep looping
System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Exception doing background web request:" + ex.ToString());
}
// wait for five minutes before we query again. Note that this is five minutes between the END of one request and the start of another--if you want 5 minutes between the START of each request, this will need to change a little.
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(5 * 60 * 1000);
}
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
// we need to get notified of this error here somehow by logging it or something...
System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Error in BackgroundQuery.BackgroundThread:" + ex.ToString());
}
}
}
private static BackgroundQuery _BackgroundQuerier; // set only during application startup
protected void Application_Start(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
// other initialization here...
_BackgroundQuerier = new BackgroundQuery();
// get the value here (it may or may not be set quite yet at this point)
BackgroundResult result = _BackgroundQuerier.LatestResult;
// other initialization here...
}

How to return a data before method complete execution?

I have a slow and expensive method that return some data for me:
public Data GetData(){...}
I don't want to wait until this method will execute. Rather than I want to return a cached data immediately.
I have a class CachedData that contains one property Data cachedData.
So I want to create another method public CachedData GetCachedData() that will initiate a new task(call GetData inside of it) and immediately return cached data and after task will finish we will update the cache.
I need to have thread safe GetCachedData() because I will have multiple request that will call this method.
I will have a light ping "is there anything change?" each minute and if it will return true (cachedData != currentData) then I will call GetCachedData().
I'm new in C#. Please, help me to implement this method.
I'm using .net framework 4.5.2

The basic idea is clear:
You have a Data property which is wrapper around an expensive function call.
In order to have some response immediately the property holds a cached value and performs updating in the background.
No need for an event when the updater is done because you poll, for now.
That seems like a straight-forward design. At some point you may want to use events, but that can be added later.
Depending on the circumstances it may be necessary to make access to the property thread-safe. I think that if the Data cache is a simple reference and no other data is updated together with it, a lock is not necessary, but you may want to declare the reference volatile so that the reading thread does not rely on a stale cached (ha!) version. This post seems to have good links which discuss the issues.

If you will not call GetCachedData at the same time, you may not use lock. If data is null (for sure first run) we will wait long method to finish its work.
public class SlowClass
{
private static object _lock;
private static Data _cachedData;
public SlowClass()
{
_lock = new object();
}
public void GetCachedData()
{
var task = new Task(DoStuffLongRun);
task.Start();
if (_cachedData == null)
task.Wait();
}
public Data GetData()
{
if (_cachedData == null)
GetCachedData();
return _cachedData;
}
private void DoStuffLongRun()
{
lock (_lock)
{
Console.WriteLine("Locked Entered");
Thread.Sleep(5000);//Do Long Stuff
_cachedData = new Data();
}
}
}
I have tested on console application.
static void Main(string[] args)
{
var mySlow = new SlowClass();
var mySlow2 = new SlowClass();
mySlow.GetCachedData();
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
mySlow.GetData();
mySlow2.GetData();
}
mySlow.GetCachedData();
Console.Read();
}

Maybe you can use the MemoryCache class,
as explained here in MSDN

How to make a static class update its own variables constantly?

I have a user control that displays information from the database. This user control has to update these information constantly(let's say every 5 seconds). A few instances of this user control is generated programmatically during run time in a single page. In the code behind of this user control I added a code that sends a query to the database to get the needed information (which means every single instance of the user control is doing this). But this seems to slow down the processing of queries so I am making a static class that will do the querying and store the information in its variables and let the instances of my user control access those variables. Now I need this static class to do queries every 5 seconds to update its variables. I tried using a new thread to do this but the variables don't seem to be updated since I always get a NullReferenceException whenever I access them from a different class.
Here's my static class:
public static class SessionManager
{
public static volatile List<int> activeSessionsPCIDs;
public static volatile List<int> sessionsThatChangedStatus;
public static volatile List<SessionObject> allSessions;
public static void Initialize() {
Thread t = new Thread(SetProperties);
t.Start();
}
public static void SetProperties() {
SessionDataAccess sd = new SessionDataAccess();
while (true) {
allSessions = sd.GetAllSessions();
activeSessionsPCIDs = new List<int>();
sessionsThatChangedStatus = new List<int>();
foreach (SessionObject session in allSessions) {
if (session.status == 1) { //if session is active
activeSessionsPCIDs.Add(session.pcid);
}
if (session.status != session.prevStat) { //if current status doesn't match the previous status
sessionsThatChangedStatus.Add(session.pcid);
}
}
Thread.Sleep(5000);
}
}
And this is how I am trying to access the variables in my static class:
protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
SessionManager.Initialize();
loadSessions();
}
private void loadSessions()
{ // refresh the current_sessions table
List<int> pcIds = pcl.GetPCIds(); //get the ids of all computers
foreach (SessionObject s in SessionManager.allSessions)
{
SessionInfo sesInf = (SessionInfo)LoadControl("~/UserControls/SessionInfo.ascx");
sesInf.session = s;
pnlMonitoring.Controls.Add(sesInf);
}
}
Any help, please? Thanks

Multiple threads problem
You have one thread that gets created for each and every call to SessionManager.Initialize.
That happens more than once in the lifetime of the process.
IIS recycles your app at some point, after a period of time should you have absolutely no requests.
Until that happens, all your created threads continue to run.
After the first PageLoad you will have one thread which updates stuff every 5 seconds.
If you refresh the page again you'll have two threads, possibly with different offsets in time but each of which, doing the same thing at 5 second intervals.
You should atomically check to see if your background thread is started already. You need at least an extra bool static field and a object static field which you should use like a Monitor (using the lock keyword).
You should also stop relying on volatile and simply using lock to make sure that other threads "observe" updated values for your static List<..> fields.
It may be the case that the other threads don't observe a change field and thusly, for them, the field is still null - therefore you get the NullReferenceException.
About volatile
Using volatile is bad, at least in .NET. There is a 90% chance that you think you know what it is doing and it's not true and there's a 99% chance that you feel relief because you used volatile and you aren't checking for other multitasking hazards the way you should.
RX to the rescue
I strongly suggest you take a look at this wonderful thing called Reactive Extensions.
Believe me, a couple of days' research combined with the fact that you're in a perfect position to use RX will pay of, not just now but in the future as well.
You get to keep your static class, but instead of materialised values that get stored within that class you create pipes that carry information. The information flows when you want it to flow. You get to have subscribers to those pipes. The number of subscribers does not affect the overall performance of your app.
Your app will be more scalable, and more robust.
Good luck!

There are few solution for this approach:
One of them is:
It's better in Global.asax in Application_start or Session_Start (depends on your case) create Thread to call your method:
Use below code :
var t = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => {
while(true)
{
SessionManager.SetProperties();
Task.Delay(5);
}
});
Second solution is using Job Scheduler for ASP.NET (that's my ideal solution).
for more info you can check this link How to run Background Tasks in ASP.NET
and third solution is rewrite your static class as follow:
public static class SessionManager
{
public static volatile List<int> activeSessionsPCIDs;
public static volatile List<int> sessionsThatChangedStatus;
public static volatile List<SessionObject> allSessions;
static SessionManager()
{
Initialize();
}
public static void Initialize() {
var t = Task.Factory.StartNew(() => {
while(true)
{
SetProperties();
Task.Delay(5);
}
});
}
public static void SetProperties() {
SessionDataAccess sd = new SessionDataAccess();
while (true) {
allSessions = sd.GetAllSessions();
activeSessionsPCIDs = new List<int>();
sessionsThatChangedStatus = new List<int>();
foreach (SessionObject session in allSessions) {
if (session.status == 1) { //if session is active
activeSessionsPCIDs.Add(session.pcid);
}
if (session.status != session.prevStat) { //if current status doesn't match the previous status
sessionsThatChangedStatus.Add(session.pcid);
}
}
Thread.Sleep(5000);
}
}

This is a solution that is a change in approach, but I kept the solution in Web Forms, to make it more directly applicable to your use case.
SignalR is a technology that enables real-time, two way communication between server and clients (browsers), which can replace your static session data class. Below, I have implemented a simple example to demonstrate the concept.
As a sample, create a new ASP.NET Web Forms application and add the SignalR package from nuget.
Install-Package Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR
You will need to add a new Owin Startup class and add these 2 lines:
using Microsoft.AspNet.SignalR;
... and within the method
app.MapSignalR();
Add some UI elements to Default.aspx:
<div class="jumbotron">
<H3 class="MyName">Loading...</H3>
<p class="stats">
</p>
</div>
Add the following JavaScript to the Site.Master. This code references signalr, and implement client-side event handlers and initiates contact with the signalr hub from the browser. here's the code:
<script src="Scripts/jquery.signalR-2.2.0.min.js"></script>
<script src="signalr/hubs"></script>
<script >
var hub = $.connection.sessiondata;
hub.client.someOneJoined = function (name) {
var current = $(".stats").text();
current = current + '\nuser ' + name + ' joined.';
$(".stats").text(current);
};
hub.client.myNameIs = function (name) {
$(".MyName").text("Your user id: " + name);
};
$.connection.hub.start().done(function () { });
</script>
Finally, add a SignalR Hub to the solution and use this code for the SessionDataHub implementation:
[HubName("sessiondata")]
public class SessionDataHub : Hub
{
private ObservableCollection<string> sessions = new ObservableCollection<string>();
public SessionDataHub()
{
sessions.CollectionChanged += sessions_CollectionChanged;
}
private void sessions_CollectionChanged(object sender, NotifyCollectionChangedEventArgs e)
{
if (e.Action == NotifyCollectionChangedAction.Add)
{
Clients.All.someOneJoined(e.NewItems.Cast<string>().First());
}
}
public override Task OnConnected()
{
return Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
{
var youAre = Context.ConnectionId;
Clients.Caller.myNameIs(youAre);
sessions.Add(youAre);
});
}
public override Task OnDisconnected(bool stopCalled)
{
// TODO: implement this as well.
return base.OnDisconnected(stopCalled);
}
}
For more information about SignalR, go to http://asp.net/signalr
Link to source code: https://lsscloud.blob.core.windows.net/downloads/WebApplication1.zip