[Best practice] Heavy background tasks?

[eluser]jedd[/eluser]

There are some down sides to this. Just have to figure out what they are...

Well, the obvious one (and I mention this only for the other viewers at home) is that you are far more likely to end up with an inconsistent database .. hence the appeal of an OLAP one-way-sync'd bugger to handle this kind of work. A master/slave approach here (that you overwrite every half hour) wouldn't really help, unfortunately, as your reports won't be making any changes -- it's the primary DB's integrity you're worried about.

Solutions sometimes involve the dirty words 'stored procedures' .. but in reality any decent API (in our case, a Model) and a commitment to not subvert same, should suffice.

Or, if you want a one word answer, control.