Best Practices for re-scheduling and starting the specific timer job using code

Question

I have a situation where some of the code needs to re-schedule the specific timer job and start it according to new schedule. The timer jobs actually writes (need permissions) into the SharePoint configuration database.

I know it's a bit tricky situation because the code needs to be executed and must have the Farm administrator permission for manipulation of SharePoint configuration Database. We also know that our majority of code runs under the application pool account and of course we don't wanna promote our application pool account as a Farm Administrator account (as per Best practices).

What are the alternative scenarios we have at the moment?

Answer 1

If you have a web part UI for manipulating timer job schedules in SharePoint 2007, then I'd say the best practice would be to have the web part running on a page that is hosted by the Central administration site. After all such a task is an administrative task.

If the web part is in fact in the central admin site, and the logged in user is an administrator, then it should have the necessary permissions to write to the config db.

Note: In SharePoint 2010, this sort of functionality is already built in to central admin