Long Running Orchestrations and Receive Ports

Hello,

Im really struggling with what I think is a basic concept in BizTalk. All im really looking for here is just a push in the right direction.

Overall I am trying to figure out a good way to deal with processing a lot of records in a database.

Here is my current design:

I have an orchestration which kicks off using a Receive Location. This orchestration then continues in a loop to get one record from the database, processess it , and mark it as processed. If no record is return the orchestration stops.

Im trying to figure out how to prevent another instance of the Orchestration from running. If I have the Receive Location scheduled every 5 mintues, there is a chance more than one Orchestration will run if the first batch has not completed.

I have looked at the Singleton Pattern but as far as I can tell it does not prevent a receieve location from starting another instance of this orchestration.

I have tried a few different ways of storing a value in the database or in a singleton variable to keep track but I end up having to write a lot of extra stuff to make sure its working and doesnt get stuck.

Can anyone shed some light on a good way to do this?

Jeremy Whittington