Background Processing Patterns

Use these patterns to keep background processing reliable as load and team size increase.

Idempotent handlers

Design handlers so re-execution is safe.

Patterns:

• Upsert instead of blind insert.
• Check external side effect state before issuing duplicate calls.
• Use deterministic business keys for deduplication.

Thin job, rich domain service

Keep job classes focused on orchestration and call domain services for business logic.

Benefits:

• easier testing
• clearer retry boundaries
• cleaner dependency graph

Retry-aware external calls

When calling external systems:

• treat transient failures as expected
• use RetryBehavior.Backoff for dependency outages
• keep terminal errors explicit and observable

Concurrency boundaries

For recurring jobs that mutate shared resources:

• set AllowConcurrentRuns = false
• keep execution windows shorter than schedule interval when possible

Operational visibility pattern

Track by RunId and JobName in logs and traces so run-history and app diagnostics connect cleanly.

_logger.LogInformation("Processing invoice batch. Job={JobName} RunId={RunId} Attempt={Attempt}",
    context.JobName,
    context.RunId,
    context.Attempt);