Best way to run a background task in ASP.Net web app and also get feedback?

Question

I am thinking on the following approach but not sure if its the best way out:

step1 (server side): A TaskMangaer class creates a new thread and start a task.
ste

Answer 1

I think the problem with storing the result in the cache is that ASP.NET might scavenge that cache entry for other purposes (ie if its short on memory, if its grumpy, etc). Something that is served from the cache should be something you can recreate on demand if its not found in the cache, the ASP.NET runtime is free to dump cache entries whenever it feels like it.

The usage of the cache in the badge discussion seems fundamentally different, in that case the task was shortlived. The cache was just being used as a hacky timer to fire off the task periodically.

Can you confirm this is a task that is going to take 5 minutes, and require its own thread that whole time? This is a performance concern in itself, you will only be able to support a limited number of such requests if each requires its own thread for so long. Only if thats acceptable would I let the task camp a thread for so long.

If its ok for these tasks to camp a thread, then I'd just go ahead and store the result in a dictionary global to the process. The key of the dictionary would correlate to the client request / AJAX callback series. The key should incorporate the user ID as well if security is at all important.

If you need to scale up to many users, then I think you need to break the task down into asynchronous steps, and in that case I'd probably use a DB table to store the results (again keyed per request / user).