Today we have built a console application for running the scheduled tasks for our ASP.NET website. But I think this approach is a bit error prone and difficult to maintain. How do you execute your scheduled task (in an windows/IIS/ASP.NET environment)
Update:
Examples of tasks:
This technique by Jeff Atwood for Stackoverflow is the simplest method I've come across. It relies on the "cache item removed" callback mechanism build into ASP.NET's cache system
Update: Stackoverflow has outgrown this method. It only works while the website is running but it's a very simple technique that is useful for many people.
Also check out Quartz.NET
I've used Abidar successfully in an ASP.NET project (here's some background information).
The only problem with this method is that the tasks won't run if the ASP.NET web application is unloaded from memory (ie. due to low usage). One thing I tried is creating a task to hit the web application every 5 minutes, keeping it alive, but this didn't seem to work reliably, so now I'm using the Windows scheduler and basic console application to do this instead.
The ideal solution is creating a Windows service, though this might not be possible (ie. if you're using a shared hosting environment). It also makes things a little easier from a maintenance perspective to keep things within the web application.