Runing continues proccess on a web server

Question

I' am building some RSS web service in ASP.net (using IIS as the web server). In it I wand to create some king of RSS reader. I 'am creating some process that will retrieve the content from the RSS feed every 3 hours. I want to create a control panel that will give me the ability to start/stop the process, and will have some simple dashboard that will sum the current activity.

I 'am looking for the best way to do that.

I thought about creating a Windows Service on the server, but there are security issues in starting and stopping the service from a web interface.

What is the right way to do it?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

you could create your service like this

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/easy-background-tasks-in-aspnet/

the current state (start/stop) could be set with a static variable (which is the same for the whole AppDomain) or from a config file (which would be better because it survives a AppDomain restart)

Answer 2

A windows service is the right way to perform scheduled tasks on a web server, no question, but I'd argue that a web-based control panel isn't really necessary. Can't you just RDP to the server when you want to start / stop / restart the service?