When to use WCF Service and Plain old Windows Service?

Question

We are developing an application that needs to be executing on a periodical basis (e.g. daily, or weekly depending on config).

This application needs to consume existing WCF Services but this application itself does not expose any methods for others to consume.

What would be the most suitable (and future-proof) technology to use for this case? Should we use WCF Service Library and host it as a Windows Service? Or should we just use Windows Service?

Please let me know which is the most suitable project type for this case (and why)?

Thanks all in advance!

Answer 1

If you are not exporting any of your own wcf services I don't really see why you need to designate as a WCF service. WCF functionality could be added at any time later somewhat trivially.

Answer 2

If you are not exposing any WCF endpoints, then creating a WCF server has no real value.

If you don't need your application to run continuously, then even a Windows service might be more than you need.

For the kind of situation that you are describing, I've seen more than one production application use the Windows Task Scheduler to run a command line application. Assuming the schedule is a simple repeating pattern and you don't have to create many windows task instances, its a nice solution. Its reasonably reliable, zero development time, and as future-proof as you can get.