Question

Environment: C#.NET VS 2012

We need to write an order delivery process. Basically it runs through the orders tables and and creates a file every night, that contains orders that are received on that day.

Traditionally we build this using Windows Console Application and a scheduled task wakes up this console application at every night (or every 6 hrs) to deliver the files

We are planning to re-write this console application. We are leaning towards both approaches i.e.

Approach 1: the scheduled task would run to deliver the order every night

Approach 2: ASP.NET web apps, that would also deliver the orders.

I am new to WCF, not yet tried it, is this a good situation to use WCF?
If so, can someone throw me some basic points how to implement this.

FYI: I have implemented another approach for some other client, where we have a ASMX web service that does this job, and the console application just calls the web service.
One disadvantages we have with this approach is, the file creation and delivery and everything is done through IIS and we prefer not to use IIS if it needs to be called from Windows Scheduler. This is for performance reasons.

Thanks

Suresh

Answer 1

Keep it simple. Run a console application as a scheduled task.

An IIS app (WCF service or WebApi) would only be useful if you get job requests, i.e. acting as a server.