I am writing an Azure hosted MVC website for a gym booking system. I need to be able to maintain membership expiry, suspensions as well as gym class attendence (i.e. logging to the database if a session has been missed). Each of these tasks requires a "c# service function" to be run that will go through the database, perform some checks and update records as and when required.
I need this to run pretty regularly to ensure that missed sessions are logged asap. Should I be developing this as an Azure WebJob and running it continuously? Should i be doing it in another manner? If I could get some suggestions on routes to take that would be massively appreciated.
Thanks
You have a few options: Web Jobs, Scheduler, and Worker Roles.
Web Jobs are a nice addon to an existing azure web app and have the benefit of no additional cost. Web Jobs use Scheduler under the covers if you choose to schedule the Web Job to run at an interval other than continuously. Here is a nice answer that describes the differences between the two.
Worker Roles would be the next logical step up from a Web Job. Worker Roles are dedicated Cloud Service VMs that can provide more dedicated power and offer greater scaling capabilities. Worker Roles can also do much more than just run jobs.
For the application you have described, if you are already running on Azure App Services (Web App) it sounds like a continuously running Web Job would be the correct choice.