GUI for a Persistent WCF Service?

  • Thread starter Thread starter henry.lee.jr
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henry.lee.jr

I have seen a number of articles out there on hosting a WCF service in
[x] or [y], but I am curious if anyone has any best practice
suggestions for creating a WCF Service that runs as a Windows Service,
and having a GUI that can communicate with it (send it information and
fetch information).

Essentially I want to create a Windows Service (starts on machine
boot, etc.) that has a timer and executes a series of functions
continuously. The good news is that I have this working already.

I'm realizing now that checking event logs, log files and/or database
records to see what this thing is up to isn't exactly "user friendly".
Users will want a GUI of some sort to let them visually see that it's
running, and also see some statistics about HOW it's running
(performance times, database connectivity, last run, etc.).

What's the best practice to make this happen?

Thanks!
 
I have seen a number of articles out there on hosting a WCF service in
[x] or [y], but I am curious if anyone has any best practice
suggestions for creating a WCF Service that runs as a Windows Service,
and having a GUI that can communicate with it (send it information and
fetch information).

Essentially I want to create a Windows Service (starts on machine
boot, etc.) that has a timer and executes a series of functions
continuously. The good news is that I have this working already.

I'm realizing now that checking event logs, log files and/or database
records to see what this thing is up to isn't exactly "user friendly".
Users will want a GUI of some sort to let them visually see that it's
running, and also see some statistics about HOW it's running
(performance times, database connectivity, last run, etc.).

What's the best practice to make this happen?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I am just coming to the realization that I may need to create a
Windows Service to host every single WCF Service I create?

I guess I was a bit uninformed but I presumed that WCF Services were
hosted by default, i.e. you threw your WCF Service file(s) on the
network and as long as a given machine had the proper runtime you
could call them at will. From my latest reading that doesn't seem to
be the case. It appears that you have to host all of your WCF Services
somewhere (whether it be IIS, or a Windows Service) if you want them
to be accessible.

So, in an environment where I have a WCF Services for:

1. FTP
2. Emailing
3. File Creation

I would need a Windows Service to host each one of them?

I guess I could host them all in IIS, which may make things easier as
far as deployment, but is hosting in IIS and using HTTP as my
communication protocol much slower than say Windows Service hosting
with TCP protocol?
 
I have seen a number of articles out there on hosting a WCF service in
[x] or [y], but I am curious if anyone has any best practice
suggestions for creating a WCF Service that runs as a Windows Service,
and having a GUI that can communicate with it (send it information and
fetch information).

Essentially I want to create a Windows Service (starts on machine
boot, etc.) that has a timer and executes a series of functions
continuously. The good news is that I have this working already.

I'm realizing now that checking event logs, log files and/or database
records to see what this thing is up to isn't exactly "user friendly".
Users will want a GUI of some sort to let them visually see that it's
running, and also see some statistics about HOW it's running
(performance times, database connectivity, last run, etc.).

What's the best practice to make this happen?
Click to expand...
You have a WCF service hosted by a Windows service. The task is to
provide a UI for the Windows service. This might be useful.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms683502(VS.85).aspx
If the link breaks search for "Interactive Services" at MSDN.

regards
A.G.
 
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