I am writing a Windows Service that reads and processes files on a set
schedule. I want to create a second app that can monitor the Windows
service. The Windows service will write trace messages at certain
points while executing. The monitoring app I want to write will be
very simple, just picking up these traces and displaying them to show
progress of the service.
My question is what is the best method of communication between the
apps? The monitoring app may be run on the same machine or on the same
network as the service, but not, for example, over the internet.
Should I use named pipes? TCP client/server? Ideally, the service
would somehow be able to detect if there were any "listeners" and only
write the trace messages if any listeners were present.
I was wondering what others have done in this regard and can you
suggest some code or topics I should look at? What would be the best
way to accomplish this?
Thanks