sql - How best execute query in background to not freeze application (.NET)

Question

My WinForm apps needs to execute complex query with significant execution time, I have no influence (about 10mins) When query is executing user sees 'application not responding' in task manager, which is really confusing to user, also not very professional...

I believe that query shall be executed in different thread or so. Have tried some approaches but have difficulties to make it really working (execute query, force main application wait result, return back to main app, possibility to cancel execution etc)

I wonder if you have own / good working solution for that. Code samples would be also very welcome :)

Also I believe there might exist some ready to use utilities / frameworks allowing simple execution of that.

Answer 1

The simplest approach here would be to do that work from a BackgroundWorker. MSDN has examples for this. This then executes on a worker thread, with events for completion/error/etc. It can also support cancel, but your operation needs to be coded to be interruptable.

Another approach is the Task API in 4.0; but if you use this you'll need to get back to the UI thread (afterwards) yourself. With BackgroundWorker this is automatic (the events are raised on the UI thread).