Question

Wondering if there is a performance difference between letting a long running process hang in asp.net vs running the process via a windows service. I have done this once before and the windows service was much quicker and didnt bog down my system, whereas the asp.net request seemed to wreak havoc. I have no idea why, but I need to explain it to some decision makers at my work.

Answer 1

Youre probably using up all the ASP.NET worker threads. See this article for more info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc164128.aspx

Look for the section titled “Threading in ASP.NET”

That article also links here in case you miss it, for more info.