Control a service from another application in Vista

Question

Hi all, I'm wondering if it's possible to create a windows service in .NET and then create another windows.forms process that connects to the service and passes parameters, modifies and views its datastructures and connected database, etc.

I believe that in Vista this is only possible with the use of sockets, and not with a ServiceController class. Can anyone direct me to examples or tutorials on how to do this, please?

Thanks!

Answer 1

I'm not aware of a ServiceController limitation, but then: I rarely use Vista ;-p

Rather than raw sockets... one option is to have the service act as a WCF host, via ServiceHost. Your app would be a WCF client, (proxy generated via svcutil.exe or via the IDE). This would make it painless to talk to, The only question would be which channel to use - perhaps named pipes, since that is machine specific.