Long process on shared server?

Question

I built an application that has 2 scheduled tasks. One of
them sends
e-mails to a list on a daily basis and the other completes an
HTTP
request.
The number of records is getting larger and these tasks are
failing
because they exceed the timeout set on the ColdFusion or web
server.
I'm using a shared hosting environment at Network Solutions
and it's
unlikely I'd be able to increase the timeout.
This application is built using ColdFusion Components.
I had heard of a asynchronous gateway I might be able to use,
but
again, I don't know if I'd be able to set that up on a shared
hosting
environment.
Does anyone have any ideas, aside from getting a dedicated
server?
I thought about maybe instead of performing all these
requests in a
single page call, but instead, scheduling each request a few
seconds
from each other, but I don't know if CFSCHEDULE will allow
hundreds of
entries at a time.
Thanks,
Andy

Answer 1

I do not know how this plays in shared hosting environment so
use with
extreme caution. But you can use the <cfsetting
requesttimeout=""> tag
at the beginning of a page to specify how long that page has
to run,
somewhat overriding the setting given in the administrator.
But I could
see hosting companies controlling this tag for what it could
do to the
performance of their servers if misused.
Async gateways are a good option if they are available to
you. They do
require the 'enterprise' level of CF. Gateways are not
included in the
'standard' edition. They also require some CF-Administrator
configuration, but nothing more then a scheduled task or DSN
configuration does.