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Remote server scheduled task

I am looking to program a simple "data push" service, that extracts data out of a SQL Server database, and deposits a CSV file to a remote FTP site every ten minutes. This service will be running on a remote server, managed over TeamViewer.
There are a few ways I've thought to do this, but would like a bit of advice as to which is the best and most reliable method. A few pro's and cons would also be very helpful from people who have experience in this type of work.
Possible solutions:
Windows service with use of Thread.Sleep(..) to run task every ten minutes
Simple EXE console project that runs as a Windows Scheduler task
Windows service with use of a Timer class
Any other methods?
The program will be written in C#, but I am very flexible in terms of project type, design etc.
The main requirement of this service is to be reliable, and I'd also look to build in an alerts system to notify on failure.
Many thanks

I would favour a scheduled task for this kind of application, as it's far easier to make changes to the schedule at a later date.
There's a previous question along a similar line here: Windows Service or Task Scheduler for maintenance tasks?

ASP.NET Update database every hour

I want to copy one row from table A to table B per hour on my asp.net website. How can I do that? Do I need win32 application? I would like to avoid that.

This sounds like you want to create a stored procedure and use the Sql Server Jobs scheduler to run it every hour. See here for details of setting that up
Or if you are using Sql Express see this question "How to run a stored procedure every day in SQL Server Express Edition?"
Ideally you wouldn't do this using IIS etc, unless there is some reason you don't have access to the database.

You can use Timer.
If you use SQL Server you can also schedule a job on the DB directly.

I would agree with brodie. Alternativly create a SSIS package and run either as a SQL Job or a scheduled task from command line(using DTEXEC).
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms365302.aspx - Shows you how to create a basic solution.
http://decipherinfosys.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/scheduling-ssis-packages-with-sql-server-agent/ - Shows you how to schedule your task.
For your exercise either would do the trick. I would suggest using either that you feel more familiar with. But certainly wouldnt suggest creating a timer driven service.

You could create a webpage that accomplishes this and use a free service like pingdom.com to call that page every hour.
EDIT:
Mine is the easy route, probably not the best solution but quick and simple
You can check this out also:
https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/easy-background-tasks-in-aspnet/

see this example for creating a new thread in global asax, http://www.mikesdotnetting.com/Article/129/Simple-task-Scheduling-using-Global.asax
Be aware though if the website goes down the process will not continue to run, if this is a problem a sql batch job or windows service would be better suited, and if the task is resource intensive it would be better to do this on another machine anyway as the global asax method will take away processing resources from your website

Scheduling back up in c#

I am writing a software for a company in c# which is intended to run on windows platform.
One of my requirements is to allow the user to schedule back ups.
That is, the user will set a time where the database will be backed up automatically by the computer.
On the linux platform I would have use crons but I am a bit lost on the windows platform. I do not want the software itself to be actually opened for the back up to run. I want it to be carried out even if the software itself is not running.
My best bet is to use windows scheduler or create a custom service which will run at start up.
Can anyone point me to how to actually achieve this? Any constructive suggestions are welcomed.
Thanks.

For info the Windows "AT" command is somewhat similar to cron. You can get help from the command line thus:
AT /?
I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a db backup. Either create a Windows scheduled task, or to backup a SQL Server database, use SQL server's built in scheduler.

Another alternative would be to create a windows service to handle the task. Then you could write any code needed (e.g. Backup / Email logs, etc) quickly and easily, and it would work w/o your application running.
There are ways to accomplish the same task with Task Scheduler built into windows, but just an alternative that I would prefer.

ASP.NET Automated & Manual ETL Process

Here's an interesting problem. I have an ETL script written in c# that I have been running manually on a somewhat regular basis. It is used to update my web app's database.
I want to automate the ETL process AND create an interface for the web app admins to manually start the ETL process.
I could have sql server kick off the ETL process on a schedule and implement a button or something on a web page that will do the same thing, but I don't want to put my code in 2 different places because I don't want to update it in 2 places when it changes. But I don't know how to make my web app tell SQL server to manually start a scheduled process. Can this be done?
OR
I could somehow implement the scheduling in the web app itself, but by now most people are familiar with the problems that are faced when trying that (app may not be running at certain times, must wait on request to start a process (without some trickery)). Also, since the ETL process takes a while, I don't want to make some poor end user wait on a response, so it would definitely have to use a new thread.
What else could I do? What would you do?

You mentioned you are using SQL Server. What version is it? Is SQL Server Integration Services (which is the full-blown ETL tool for the platform) an option for you? If you want scheduled Extraction, Transformation and Load jobs, SSIS is a great tool on the Microsoft platform and is included in most SQL Server licenses.
Or, check out Quartz.

Need advice to query data from sql server on every 5 seconds and send it to other app.(.NET C#)

I have a require ment to read data from a table(SQL 2005) and send that data to other application for every 5 seconds. I am looking for the best approach to do the same.
Right now I am planning to write a console application(.NET and C#) which will read the data from sql server 2005(QUEUE table which will be filled through different applications) and send to other application through TCP/IP(Central server). Run that console application under schedule task for every 5 seconds. I am assuming scheduled task will take care to discard new run event if task is already running(avoid to run concurrent executions).
Does any body come accross similar situation? Please share your experience and advice me for best approach.
Thanks in advance for your valuable time spending for my request.
-Por-hills-

We have done simliar work. If you are going to query a sql database every 5 seconds, be sure to use a stored procedure that is optimized to be very fast. It should not update data unless aboslutely necessary. This approach is typically called 'polling' and I've found that it is acceptable if your sqlserver is not otherwise bogged down with too many other calls.
In approaches we've used, a Windows Service that does the polling works well.
To communicate results to another app, it all depends on what your other app is doing and what type of interface you can make into it, and how quickly you need the results. The WCF class libraries from Microsoft provide many workable approaches for real time communication. My preference is to write to the applications database, and then have the application read the data (if it works for that app). If you need something real time, WCF is the way to go, and I'd suggest using a stateless protocol like http if < 5 sec response time is required, (using standard HTTP posts), or TCP/IP if subsecond response time is required.

since I assume your central storage is also SQL 2005, have you considered using what SQL Server 2005 offers out of the box to achieve your requirements? Rather than pool every 5 seconds, marshal and unmarshal TCP/IP, implement authentication and authorization for the TCP/IP pipe, scale TCP transmission with boxcaring, manage message acknowledgments and retries, deal with central site availability, fragment large messages, implement fairness in transmission and so on and so forth, why not simply use Service Broker? It does all you need and more, out of the box, already tested, already tuned for performance and scalability.
Getting reliable messaging right is not trivial and you should focus your efforts in meeting your business specifics, not reiventing the wheel.

I would recommend writing a Windows Service (since you are C#) that has some timer which runs every 5 seconds. That way you wont be starting and stopping an application all the time, it can run even when there is no one logged into the machine, and it will automatically start when the machine is restarted.

For one of my projects, I needed to do something periodically. I opted for a service and set up a timer that takes care of reading the data. You might consider that solution. It has worked well for me.

I suggest to create a windows service and not an application and to perform the timing yourself - create a timer and execute one step on each timer event. For the communication you have many choices - I would consider using standard technologies like a webservice or Winows Communication Foundation.
Besides this custom solution I would evaluate if the task can be solved using Microsoft Integration Services .
Finally other question comes to mind - why do you need this application? Why doesn't/don't the application(s) consuming the data query the database? Is the expensive polling required? Is it possible for the data producers to signal the availibilty of new data directly to the data consumers?

I am not sure about the details of your project, specifically related to security but maybe it would be better to create an SSIS package and schedule it as a job?