Is there a term or practice of running an application on a web server? I would like to run a program either console application to send commands to my ASP.net application. Some commands would drop tables, delete expired records, and update table data.

Should I use a web service to perform these tasks or is there another method for employing these executions? Is it possible to write something like this and have it running as a background service?

Also, I would like it to run as a process with at any an option to disable the process. Consider the term "web application sub-worker."

Any help or comment about this would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.