Best mechanism to implement an IPC Bus in .NET?

Question

I have several apps that want to communicate LOCALLY via a data bus.

Ideally:

• They talk and listen whenever they come online
• There will not be an "owner" of this communication method.
• No extra components to install (ie. Message Queues)
• It would be nice if there were no ports to require open

What do you think is the best technology to do this?

Is there a way to use WCF for a data bus?

Answer 1

Yes you can and I think should use WCF to do this. The Named Pipe Binding is awesome at on box interprocess communications. It is simple to use (assuming you have some exposure to services) and is very efficient. I think this fits what you are trying to do perfectly (from how you describe it).

There are many articles on the net about using this binding this way. Here is one that targets pretty much what you describe... I read through it a little, but your mileage with this particular one may vary.

If you search for WCF and Named Pipe you will find a lot of resources out there.

Answer 2

You could also take a look at this:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/NullTransportForWCF.aspx