I’m loath to ask another scheduler question here, I’ve read through dozens, but it’s still not clear to me what tools would best fit my need. I have three requirements for a reporting app:
User invoked
fixed scheduled
user scheduled.
I have an ASP.NET forms app to cover #1 and a C# console app to handle #2 but now #3 has been added to the mix.
So for the user scheduled reports I need to:
Present the user with a schedule selector and save their selection (into SQL Server?)
Have an app that checks the database for jobs to run/schedule
App to run the query and format the report
I suppose the latter two could be a single app but I’ve read it’s hard to debug service apps so keeping them separate may be good. I don’t know what parts of my requirements are met by Quartz.net and I’ve seen separate GUI tools (DayPilot) and backend (Task Manager API, CodePlex taskscheduler) mentioned. Not having used any of these I’m hoping to minimize my false starts.
If you require job scheduler try using hangfire.io
If you have SQL Server, then you should use SQL Server Reporting Services, which does all three.
Related
I need to write a windows service which performs several operations as follows:
Fetching data from api and dump it to db - to be performed every hour
Consolidation - to be performed every 6 hours
Summary - to be performed once a day at 01:00
I don't want to use multiple timers or no timer at all. Please suggest best way to schedule these tasks.
There are multiple ways to do this. If you insist on using a windows service, you could look into Hangfire. The cost for using this is that you'll need to add a database that can store the information about the jobs.
Check the following link for Hangfire: https://www.hangfire.io/
You can also use the native Windows Scheduler for scheduling jobs.
Instead of creating a windows service you'll create a console app or something similar and use the Windows Scheduler for when it should execute.
If you don't want to use the native functionality I recommend using a nuget package like this one; https://www.quartz-scheduler.net/
All the above was found with a little bit of google magic and knowing the windows operating system..
I have done a lot of searching to find a way to start a GUI application from a windows service on Windows 7. Most of what I have found is that with Windows 7 services now run in a separate user session and can not display any graphical interface to the current user. I'm wondering is there is any kind of workaround or different way of accomplishing something like this? Can the service start a process in a different user session?
This change was made for a reason and not simply to annoy developers. The correct approach is to put your UI in a different program and communicate with the session through a pipe, or some other IPC mechanism. The recommendation that services do not present UI is more than 10 years old now.
You should really try to follow these rules, even though it may seem inconvenient to begin with. On the plus side you will enjoy the benefit of keeping your service logic and UI logic separate
If your services runs under the LOCALSYSTEM account then you can check "Allow service to interact with desktop", for the benefit of legacy services that would fail if they could not show UI. But it won't help you anyway because the UI will show in session 0 where it is never seen!
I recommend you take a read of the official Microsoft document describing session 0 isolation.
There is a way to do this.
If you need to show a simple message box you can use the WTSSendMessage Routine.
If you need a complex UI elements you can put it in a separate program and you need to use CreateProcessAsUser Routine.
In this sample provided by microsoft you can see the process.
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2010/11/26/all-in-one-windows-service-code-samples.aspx
Windows 7 introduced what is called "Session 0 isolation" that in practice means that every service (except system services) run in a separate non-interactive session. For this reason you cannot directly create a GUI from within the service, except if you run in legacy mode by flagging the Interact With Destop option, which is not good if you plan to run your service for some years in the future.
As David Heffernan said, the best is to use a client-server architecture. WCF makes it easy to communicate with named pipes.
This page is a good starting point to read about Session 0 Isolation and this white paper is also very good.
I would like to know whether it is possible to run a C# console or ASP.NET application periodically.
My purpose is to automatically do the following steps once a month:
1) Query a Source database.
2) Take the result of the query at (1) and manipulate them by using LINQ and C#, for instance by checking if a certain value is already present in the Destination database.
3) Store the derived data in a Destination database.
The application has to run on a Windows Server 2008, the Source database is in a SQL 2005 Server and the Destination database is in a SQL 2008 Server.
I tried to create for instance a SSIS package but it won't do the job since I cannot add any logic.
Anybody has any suggestion?
You should create a Scheduled Task to perform this. Look here: Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Task scheduler
And as you stated, yes - a console app is highly recommended.
Edit
I agree with #andynormancx in that SSIS may be a better way to do this; however, it is commonly accepted to create a console app executed by a scheduled task. This is where it comes down to your resources, time, and expertise: it may or may not be worth the effort to learn enough about SSIS to create a package in SqlServer to do what you need. If someone were to give a complete answer using SSIS to perform this task, I would certainly bow to that expertise.
You can create a new Scheduled Task. It would be much easier and you don't have to re-invent the wheel.
You could create a scheduled task that will call your .exe at pre-defined interval.
Go to your control panel and select Scheduled Task and then add scheduled task
You can do it, of course. But I would recommend making it a Windows service.
If you really want to do it in C# I suggest you write a service, your code is almost Identical to a normal console app.
Check the following link to get started.
C# Service step by step
How do I send email on daily, weekly and monthly bases using c#.net?
I was thinking of creating a windows service application but I don't know how to do it and if it's the right way to take.
Your thoughts are greatly appreciated.
A windows service is probably the best option.
In your service have a timer that fires with whatever resolution you need (every minute/hour/day etc) and on the timer tick even send your emails.
There are many tutorials for creating windows services with .NET.
A Windows service will do the trick. A good benefit of a Windows service is that it starts up when Windows starts up (or can be set to, anyway). So the machine can be left fairly unattended (as a good server should) and doesn't need anybody logged into it for the service to run. So if that's an important consideration for your scenario then perhaps a Windows service would be the way to go.
If you just want to create a console application instead (which can generally be easier to create/test/debug) then you can schedule it with the native Windows task scheduler. However, unless I'm mistaken, I think a user needs to be logged in to the machine in order for it to run. At least under certain circumstances. So a Windows service is probably your best bet for an unattended task.
As for creating the service, Visual Studio should have a project template for that. The scheduling would be handled with a Timer.
You could also use the Windows Task Scheduler. Quartz.Net seems to be the right tool, too (never used it though).
Windows Service is a good choice.
Remember to save state to disk (file or database) because service restart (for example, due to a reboot) is possible. For example, your next email delivery is a week in the future, you have to save that date to disk. So when your server is down due to a power failure 3 days later and recover after another day, your Windows Service can still set the right timer according to the date saved to disk.
Create a console application, which would be launched from the Windows task scheduler. Creating a windows service is unnecessarily complex, IMO, since you are simply having the program execute in response to time intervals; not other unpredictable external events where you would need a 'listener' type application. KISS!
I'm making a small application that is supposed to download info from the web every day at 2am. It will download the information and write the strings to an XML file of my choosing.
Using .NET and C#.
My initial approach was to install a service on the users computer and have that run, but I'm not so sure. I've not even used it so much in the past, only once.
Which is the best (read: time tested :P ) approach to this very common problem.
You can either build your application as a Windows Service, as you mentioned.
Or else it would probably be a better idea to create a normal console application, and launch it automatically at 2.00am with the Windows Task Scheduler.
You can consider both methods as popular and "time-tested".
I would suggest having a console app, which calls data fetching algo in a separate public class (not the main method).
Like Daniel mentioned, run it via Windows Task Scheduler which itself will take care of most scheduling requirements.
This allows the solution to be scaled in the future if need be. E.g. convert into Windows Service, full GUI Winform or even SQL server scheduled tasks etc.