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To schedule or not to schedule
?
Scheduling a task is very useful for a lot
of purposes. Your task (what you need to process) can be done using a
script (page) that will be executed.
Here are some ideas :
Update
currency values daily
If your website allows your customers to display the price of your
products in more than one currency, you should take into consideration
currency market fluctuations and display the most current price so your
customer will not be unhappy to see a different price on the final bill.
Just write a script/page (ASP, ASP.NET, ...) that updates these values
and schedules it to run everyday!
Send
monthly sales reports
You run a great e-commerce application and you want to receive a monthly
report of the online sales? Write a script that generates the report and
schedule it for monthly delivery.
Clear
a temp directory
You need to clear a temp directory on Monday’s and Tuesday’s? It's
easier that you think.
Send
weekly newsletter
You publish news on your website daily, and you want to send an email
that contains all the news of the last 7 days. This can be done automatically!
Schedule the script that generates and sends the email and then schedule
it to run each week !
etc…
You want to schedule...
You have several way to schedule the execution
of your script (task) that will process what you want :
Using
Windows’ built-in task scheduler
You can add a task that will execute a script. You will be able to
execute VBScript.
Plus: Works pretty well
Minus: Only the server administrator can add tasks
Application_Start
and Session_Start trick
You can use an Application variable to store "scheduled tasks"
and then write a function in Session_Start that will check if a task needs
to be run: if the actual time is greater that the scheduled time, then
we run the task and flag it as having been run using the Application variable.
Plus: You can use this system without any additional software.
Minus: Not reliable. Everything depends on the Session_Start procedure
running that needs to be triggered by a hypothetical visitor.
Using
ActiveQ
This is the easiest and most reliable way to schedule the execution
of your processing scripts.
Plus: You have total control without having administrator privileges!
Minus: The server administrator needs to install ActiveQ
(really a minus?)
It's easier that you think
ActiveQ
will help you schedule your tasks easily by querying your page using an
HTTP GET or POST
method… If you are an ISP, ActiveQ is the ideal application to
provide scheduling capabilities to your users. You only need to define
an XML configuration file (in
the user’s web directory so they can edit it themselves) and then add
it to the scheduled task files list.
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