Question

I have a Windows 2008 R2 Server running IIS 7.5. Currently, I use WCF to expose an interface to the outside where the code then calls routines from my DLLs.

I would like to move away from this direct access and create some sort of daemon in C# that I can run in the background. I will use the daemon to monitor threads, accept requests, and balance performance. I plan on allowing the daemon full access to the DLLs of my main application and then will have WCF services pass on commands to the daemon as they are received.

I have looked on the Internet and found a few examples about creating a Windows Service, building installers, and registering the service; however, I cannot seem to find any documentation on how to interact with running services via a different application.

Here’s more or less an example of what I am looking to do:

Let’s say I’ve built and installed the sample service depicted here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bclteam/archive/2005/03/15/396428.aspx

Now, a customer tells me I need to extend it to allow jobs to run on demand. I have built the necessary functions to allow me to do so, but now I am faced with the issue of determining how to talk to the currently running service to tell it to start processing. How do I do this? Do you have any example links that describe this IPC ?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can send custom commands to a Windows Service, but these are only integer values:

protected override void OnCustomCommand(int command)

A better solution is to communicate with the Windows Service over “named pipes”. Best way of implementing this is IMHO to create a WCF service with NetNamedPipe binding and host it in the Windows Service itself.