How would you communicate a wcf service with a windows service?

Question

Two weeks ago I needed a way to communicate a wcf service with a windows service running on the same computer. The windows service had to get data from a external source and share it with the wcf service (hosted in IIS) who had to give it when a client made a request. I chose to do that with ipc.

I done it and now the windows service is the ipc server and the wcf service is the ipc client. This goes well but I think I made a mistake doing this because to make it run right the windows service must to be executed with the ASPNET account, for this the ASPNET password account must be assigned and when I do that the IIS does not work correctly.

I am thinking on different alternatives, but in all of them the problem persists. Some ideas?

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Edit:

What I needed was a system that made public, in a web service hosted in IIS, data gotten through telnet from another old system, what is a little unstable. How the response of this second system was slow I chose to put a process (the windows service) between the web service and the old system. The windows service had to save the data collected from the old system and when the wcf service asked it give it all at once through ipc.

Answer 1

Why not just create another account with the same permission set of the ASPNET user which both the WCF service and your other service run under? That way, you have control over the password.

Answer 2

Why does the windows service need to run as the ASPNET user? Is that because you're using an IPC connection that requires authentication from the caller?

Another alternative (if you have control over the windows-service code) would be to make that a WCF service as well (using a ServiceHost in the windows service). The IIS service could connect to the windows service using a NetTcp or NetNamedPipe binding if you need the IPC-like performance.

Answer 3

Ideally, the windows service should run as a WCF service, that way its easy for the client to communicate with it.

The next question is weather the 'client' needs to be a WCF service. If this client needs to serve other applications then it is appropriate, otherwise it may not be nessesary. I don't know enough about your system, so its up to you to decide what's best!