Large update in Event Receiver

Question

I wonder how should I make a large update in Event Receiver by executing it in other thread. Normally it would look like that:

public override void ItemUpdating(SPItemEventProperties properties)
{
    base.ItemUpdating(properties);

    SPList myList = properties.Web.Lists["myList"];
    SPQuery spQuery = new SPQuery();
    spQuery.Query = "<Where><Eq><FieldRef Name='MyField' LookupId='true' /><Value Type='Lookup'>" + properties.ListItemId + "</Value></Eq></Where>";
    SPListItemCollection itemCollection = myList.GetItems(spQuery);

    foreach(SPListItem item in itemCollection)
    { 
      ...
    }
}

But that "trigger" can affect event 100 000 rows in myList. So what is the best practice to do it, but programmatically, not using Workflows.

I mean something like:

public override void ItemUpdating(SPItemEventProperties properties)
{
    base.ItemUpdating(properties);

    // other "thread"
    UpdateMyList(properties.ListItemId);
}

It would also be nice to know when the taks is completed and give a user a feedback, when he works with the site, changing pages etc

Is that possible at all?

Answer 1

I still think that it should be timerJob; you can add "Processing Status" field to master list to track job progress and use tight schedule, but it will definitely work better than attempt to use async event receiver. just my opinion