title: Background task in a ASP webapp
body: <p>I'm fairly new to C#, and recently built a small webapp using .NET 4.0. This app has 2 parts: one is designed to run permanently and will continuously fetch data from given resources on the web. The other one accesses that data upon request to analyze it. I'm struggling with the first part.</p>
  
  <p>My initial approach was to set up a <code>Timer</code> object that would execute a fetch operation (whatever that operation is doesn't really matter here) every, say, 5 minutes. I would define that timer on <code>Application_Start</code> and let it live after that.</p>
  
  <p>However, I recently realized that applications are created / destroyed based on user requests (from my observation they seem to be destroyed after some time of inactivity). As a consequence, my background activity will stop / resume out of my control where I would like it to run continuously, with absolutely no interruption.</p>
  
  <p><strong>So here comes my question</strong>: is that achievable in a webapp? Or do I absolutely need a separate Windows service for that kind of things?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for your precious help!</p>
  
  <p>Guillaume</p>