Question

I’m sure this is possible but what I am asking for his is not really code (unless anyone knows of an example of this).

What I am looking to do is write a VB.NET program, as a service that reports anything on client1 that I want (say the fact it is online) to a database on the internet, so I can look on management1 and see the online status of the machine (assuming management1 has a connection to the online database).

What is being reported doesn’t matter, what I am looking at is a starting point to create a system like that. I have googled obviously and come up with nothing, I’d just like a “starting point” or some documentation to look at for creating something like this. The service doesn’t look too difficult but the periodic reporting of online status or ANYTHING to any kind of database is not something I am sure how to deal with.

I already have setup a VBS that reports information to an ASP script that then places it in a database but I don’t know how I would create say a “keep alive” connection for a vb.net service.

Any help or nudges in the right direction would be appreciated.

EDIT: A good example of this is the logmein service which provides online/offline information to webpage – a rudimentary version of something like that

Answer 1

A simple client server architecture should be enough.

I would go for a setup based around the server hosting webservices and the clients can be everything. In this scenario I would go for about 1 update of client state per second.

If you need to send a lot of data or more then 1 update per second I would look into using Remoting/Sockets using WCF however this is always hard to setup due to client firewalls etc. Webservices are usually pretty easy to use.