Here is the situation, I have a worker process that is automating Internet Explorer (via AxSHDocVw). This worker process is launched via a custom Windows service on the OS shell. I need to run somewhere between 4-8 of these worker processes to handle each batch of work in timely manner. I really don't want to have to tear down and recreate these processes everytime new work comes in, because of the delay incurred with launching them and then loading up IE.
What I would like to do is build a managed process garden, where my service can send work to the pre-loaded worker processes via a WCF Pipe.
My concerns are:
- Process recycling when LOH get's past a certain thresh hold
- Being able to detect if a worker process is frozen or stuck without some arbitrary timeout check
My question is, is there any good open source frameworks or tools written that already do all or most of what i'm after here?