My web app has to do some calculations in the background. I've investigated multiple solutions and I would like to go for business logic instead of a SQL job that triggers all the calculations. After a few days of research I'm still not convinced what is the best solution for my case.
A lot of articles mention Quartz.NET, a separate windows service (but I think that's not an option on most shared web host services), a windows task, etc...
To keep the calculations in the business logic I would extend my web application with a dedicated 'task' controller that fires the calculations automatically and then returns a result of its actions.
Q1: Calling the controller with a Quartz.NET timed web request will not be that hard, but how can I secure it? If I add the [Authorize] attribute to my 'task' controller it will block the request. (note that I use forms authentication on my internet web application) I don't want users on the internet to be able to launch my 'task' controller.
Q2: Also if what I'm thinking is correct that shared web host services don't support the installation of separate windows services or remote desktop connections, I'll have 2 options:
hope there is support for windows tasks at the shared web host service (but can this be called with authorization credentials?)
start the Quartz.NET from my application_start (which is certainly not an ideal solution...)
Thanks in advance
Kr
First of, I wouldn't call ASP.NET MVC controller from scheduled job. I'd just delegate to business components / services (whatever the name is) and make sure there that we run correct things with context's permissions. This could mean that I fire the job with information about for whom the calculation is done and pass that information to service component (calculate daily average for user X). I don't see a real benefit from masquerading the call with ASP.NET MVC stack.
So Q1: Secure in code level, not using ASP.NET MVC stack
You can always run without windows service, then you just take the risk of app pool shutting down when not in use. One way to get by this is to have a external ping program that makes sure that there are calls made, not ideal as you pointed out. Having jobs and triggers in database protects from losing information but not from misfires.
Q2: most likely running Quartz.NET is far easier than trying to access Windows Scheduled Tasks.
Some shared providers have very strict settings for code to run. It might be that Quartz.NET won't run at all if too tightly sandboxed.
Related
I'll try to explain my goal as good as I can;
I want to trigger a script whenever there is a new computer added to a Organizational Unit.
To do this i need to activate the logging of this event under the local security policy/audit policy. I guess my question is, do I need to do this on all the domain controllers, or is it enough to do it one just one?
Also, is it possible to see the event from a member server with the Management Tools pack installed? As I don't want to put too much work on the Domain Controllers.
Here is the Microsoft article that gives 4 ways of tracking changes in Microsoft Active-Directory. You will find everything you need from configuring the eventlog to receiving notifications by way of different kind of polling.
So say I've got an MVC app hosted in the cloud somewhere, meaning I don't have access to IIS or any infrastructure.
All I have control over is the App code itself, and what comes down to the client.
My goal
Is to collect data over time of how well the MVC app is performing in terms of response times.
Current Problems
I can get a lot of data from Google Analyics, and other client-side tricks, but that won't tell if say, the App Pool is recycling too often.
Similarly if I put stop watches in the actions, that won't tell me about any delays in the App Startup (if it has to start up again).
Also, if I do put a stop watch in the Action, it doesn't take into account any delays in redering the View. For example, even though it's bad practice, there might be a DB call being made from the View, and my action metrics won't take that into account.
My Question
So, if I want to get true metrics of how long requests are taking overal from mulitple clients and users, where are the best places to but Stopwatches in the App. Or is it impossible to get true metrics from the app itself, and I have to place counters outside of the App (like in IIS).
Add New Relic, it's available for free as part of the AppHarbor service - https://appharbor.com/addons/newrelic
Since you mention "in the cloud somewhere" are you using Microsoft Azure for hosting? If so, there's some great diagnostics you can log to your Azure storage with DiagnosticsMonitorConfiguration.
Here's a tutorial on how to add diagnostics to your web and worker roles. You can find a full list of performance counters on MSDN
You can get everything from application requests/second, memory and CPU utilization, network adapter statistics, output cache hits/misses, request execution time, etc.
I got a lot of theoretical answers from Google that WCF is better than Web Service etc. etc. But I want to know from the programming and implementation point of view. I am very new to coding and want to know that how do we implement all three of these technologies? How are they different and in which scenario we should used which technologies?
Thank you in advance.
A web service is an API that is hosted for access via a network connection - often the internet - and usually accessed over HTTP (or HTTPS).
WCF is a Microsoft .NET development framework that can be used to implement web services. That is, WCF-services are a subset of all web-services.
Windows services are a separate beast entirely: they are long-running programs that run on your local Windows machine, typically with no user interaction and on system accounts. They are used to handle many things in Windows, from low-level driver functionality to software updates.
You're really comparing apples and oranges. A web service is simply a program that you can "call" using the HTTP protocol. Typically, HTTP requests sent to the service contain some XML describing the method called and any parameters. The response from the service likewise contains XML with the return value and any output parameters. It's a little more complicated than this, but it gives you the basic idea.
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework for building network services. You can use this framework to build web services if you wish. I suspect that what's tripping you up are the various Visual Studio project templates. You have one for WCF services and one for web services. The web service template builds a web service that runs inside of IIS. The WCF template gives you far more flexibility (you can make a web service as a stand-alone application, for example), but it is far more complicated.
If you're just beginning, I'd start with web service template and IIS-based web services.
MSDN is always a good reference:
Web Service Tutorial:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8wbhsy70%28VS.80%29.aspx
WCF Tutorial:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734712.aspx
I think its always easier to learn by doing.
Good luck
I have a few WCF services that are currently being self hosted, in a very basic NT Service. I want to expand my application to add provisioning of WCF Services, and updates, as well as isolation (I want each WCF Service to be in its own AppDomain). These WCF Services contain logic that needs to be run on a regular basis, pinging the database, and getting information from external devices so that when a request comes in the data is readily available.
I'm thinking about trying out Windows Activation Service, because i really like the provisioning, and isolation that comes with a managed services infrastructure. If I didn't use WAS I would essentially have to write the same code myself.
From what I understand though WAS does not really support the model of having a service that is running before someone actually calls a method on the service. the article I read here
MSDN Article Link
states "That means in essence that out-of-the-box WAS hosting is not something that is really suited for sessionful or singleton services. It is more suitable for stateless per-call services."
it does say that "Out of the box" so I'm wondering if anyone has used WAS to host a WCF service that really behaves more like an NT Service (starting and stopping independantly of having a method called upon it).
Or any other ideas would be great. I was planning on writting this infrastructure myself, to host WCF services in a custom ServiceHost, and put their execution in a seporate AppDomain, as well as allow for provision of these services after initial installation, along with updates. However, I would MUCH MUCH MUCH rather not own that code if I don't have to.
thanks
Joshua
If you want to use WAS, it will be tricky to support a proper Singleton instance of your service.
It sounds lie what you really need to do is create a scheduled task. You could run your database update utility every 5 minutes from a scheduled task and should not have to sweat the singleton.
We are looking at a standard way of configuring the various "endpoints" of our application. Our application is a distributed system with Windows Desktop applications, Windows Server "services" and databases.
We currently configure each piece using XML files. This is getting a little out of hands as we work with larger customers who can have dozens of Servers running our application and hundreds of desktop clients.
Can anyone recommend a Microsoft technology or a third party that would allow us to centralize all that configuration information and manage it in a one place for all our applications? Any changes would be "pushed" to the endpoint(s) that are interested.
For example, if we were to change the login for one of our database, we would make that change on the database, then reflect that change in our centralized system. Following that last step, any service that needs to connect to the database would be notified of the change (and potentially receive the new data). How and what each endpoint does with that information is outside the scope of the system.
Our primary business is not "Centralized Configuration Services". We are a GIS company that provides solutions for various utilities worldwide.
I've done a couple of things to give myself this functionality over the years. I build enterprise applicatons that may be distributed across many servers. I don't want to bury config settings in each services config file or each web server's web.config file. For application specific stuff I usually create an application settings table in the app's database. The table only has two fields. SettingName and SettingValue. I then write a web or wcf service whose sole function it is to retrieve these settings. I write a function called GetSetting where you pass "SettingName" and it returns SettingValue or an empty string if your setting is not found. This way I can store all application settings for all components of the application in one spot. Maintenance and troubleshooting for this is really easy, I'm not hunting through scads of config files spread across a dozen web and app servers.
For larger scale apps I might create a separate AppSettings database where I add a new field to my table mentioned above. ApplicationName. My web or wcf service for this approach has the same method call (GetSetting) only at this scope I pass ApplicationName and SettingName and it returns SettingValue or an empty string.
Doing either of these things allows you to centralize all app settings for any size application or IT shop. It has worked really well for us.
You could use RSS together with BitTorrent to distribute changes. See Wikipedia. It is not MS specific however, but should provide the flexibility you need - a configuration server holding the configuration and providing the feeds needed to configure the clients and possibly servers.
Any VCS through a secure channel?
For example, git through ssh (both available in cygwin).
I think the first step is to have the secure channel (if you want the push ability, pulling might be different).
As for managing the "versions" in different "branches", what's better than a version control system?
As it goes for the Microsoft requirement, well the Microsoft sofwares in that exists in that area would suck pretty bad in your case (as in not the best tool for the job).