WCF gives me a whole bunch of capabilities to connect two applications that are running on the same machine.
But which is the best one for my use case?
I want to develop a local application (server) which provides functionality to connect to a webserver. I want to connect from various Office application and WPF-applications to the local "server" (MVC) to send messages, files etc. to the webserver.
Is System.IO.Pipes.PipeStream the right way?
I think you need not to dial with stream directly.
If your Office apps support this, the NamedPipe binding, mentioned by Aron, will be probably the best choice.
You can also use port sharing to allow both your services to re-use single port.
Related
I'm looking for a platform with Web UI access that allows me to do the following:
Maintain a list of computers and add / remove based on their IP address.
Provide the SSH information for each computer machine.
Monitor if the machines are up ( ping ? )
Restart the machines with a web UI using the ssh information on the backend of the application.
I'm close to start making such an app myself since I can't seem to find anything close to that in the internet. Any clues if such an application exists ?
You might want to take a look at MeshCentral: https://meshcentral.com/ - you can add systems that you are managing and do some remote operations.
http://info.meshcentral.com/: Meshcentral is open source and is both a peer-to-peer technology with a wide array of uses and web service that is targeted for remote monitoring and management of computers and devices. Users can manage all their devices from a single web site, no matter the location of the computers or if they are behind routers or proxies.
If you are looking for source code you could take a look at the "Open Manageabilty Developer's Toolkit" http://opentools.homeip.net/open-manageability. This tool was built for managing systems with Intel Active Management Technology, but it does a lot of what you are looking for. You can download the source and see if you can use any of it if you decide to write your own UI.
We are developing a desktop Windows 8 application, that work with WCF-service. We want enable work with Azure WCF-service and with WCF-service in local network(choosingly). Application will be publish in Windows Store.
What the best practise deploy WCF-service on local server of company?
I understand what you want. Let's pretend the Azure part is not an option. How can a Windows Store App use a local service (WCF or not)? That's the fundamental question.
Here's the answer(s):
First, a Windows Store App cannot access intranet services unless it has private network access declared in its manifest. It looks like this:
Second, in order to use private networks in your manifest and get accepted into the Windows Store, you must be a company publisher and not an individual. More on this is discussed in this SO question: Which features are allowed for company store accounts and not individual?
Third, a local service cannot be mistakenly thought of as localhost. To this end, localhost is not available to Windows Store Apps, unless they are side-loaded (which means they are manually installed and not delivered through the Windows Store at all). To access localhost, you can enable loopback, but, as I stated, this disqualifies you from the Windows Store. There's more on this here: How does Windows 8 Loop Back work?
Forth, because you are talking about a service, you might want to authenticate the user. This is accomplished using enterprise authentication (just like in number 1) only a few checkboxes higher. And it has the same restrictions as private networks.
Fifth, you are not asking this, but to be clear, local access does not mean you can speak to a local SQL server. The reason for this is because the SQL namespace is not part of WinRT or .Net for WinRT. Windows Store Apps are intended to be service-based apps.
And, that's about it. I think you are good if you follow that.
It doesn't sound like you are talking about a pure enterprise-play, but it might be interesting to you to read through some of the strategies for enterprise developers: http://blog.jerrynixon.com/2012/08/windows-8-apps-whats-enterprise-to-do.html
As for deploying WCF, there's nothing special just because a Windows Store App is accessing it. So for deployment, just use vanilla techniques you are already using. :) That's it.
Best of luck!
I have a vb6-mysql client-server desktop application which is distributed as a setup file.
It uses DLL all logical operations as well as database operations. The EXE and the DLL are installed in the server as well as the client machines. When I say server which only means the database resides in that machine no other difference in EXE or DLLs.
As all the database operations are done in the DLL when connected from a client machine, performance would be less. It is not possible now to change all the logic into database.
Is it possible to store the DLL in the server machine only and use the same DLL by the client machine also so that database connection will always be from the server itself?
Is converting the DLL to a windows service the possible solution for this?
How can I to convert it to a service?
And finally, if it is possible to make the DLL act as a service, what would the connection issues be?
You appear to be trying to rediscover n-tier application development.
The usual way this would be done using VB6 within a LAN would be to create an ActiveX EXE instead of a DLL so you can use DCOM. However DCOM isn't something you'd want to expose over the Internet.
For such cases it is more typical to use a commonly-open-port protocol such as HTTP or HTTPS. Almost everyone has firewall settings permitting outbound HTTP and HTTPS connections and most of the major Web servers undergo regular hardening to make them safer to expose to the Internet.
The classic way to do this with VB6 was to use IIS to host the Remote Data Service, which uses a form of Web Service "under the covers" where your program doesn't deal with the gory details. However this is a deprecated approach, and today configuring IIS and the RDS components can be a chore since they are locked down hard by default.
This leaves you with such things as the deprecated SOAP Toolkit or 3rd party tools such as those in the PocketSOAP suite... or you can roll your own.
Doing this from scratch can be a bit of work but is more flexible, allowing REST instead of SOAP which can have advantages in itself. You could use whatever Web server you choose that can work with VB6 (via CGI, etc.).
The hardest approach to justify might seem the simplest on the surface: create your own protocol over TCP and write a Windows Service. This can be the most flexible of all but it can be more work than other options and you are on your own as far as making it and keeping it secure. You'll probably also face firewall issues depending on where your clients are and what the local firewall policies are there.
When we could rely on DCOM the issues were relatively small aside from security configuration headaches. With the Internet in the picture it is an entirely different story.
This really isn't something you undertake casually. Even assuming that your database is safe exposed to the Internet is naive and should be rethought.
I am working on a project that involves an embedded system which runs a non-microsoft OS with a C program for the application and am developing .NET software for its end user applications. For remote configuring with the .NET software (which can go across firewalls), I am considering using WCF. I know only a little about WCF so far but I've read that it is supposed to be interoperable with environments other than .NET. The embedded environment has an HTTP stack but no built in support for web services. Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing or know if it would be appropriate at all? If so please provide some advice or point me in the right direction.
Thanks!
WCF is interoperable because it's accessed over HTTP. Visual Studio can help you build client libraries very quickly for WCF, but client access to WCF doesn't require anything other than HTTP calls with the proper payload. If you're looking at a remote server call and your built-in support in your embedded environment is basic HTTP, look at building your server-side as REST-formatted methods. Your debugger will thank you.
What kinds of data are you planning on transferring back and forth? For something this low level and proprietary I would recommend sticking with good old fashioned Sockets.
I will be passing configuration data back and forth...basically to enable technical support staff to remotely program the device. If I were using sockets this could be binary data, but there is a requirement that customers with firewalls shouldn't need to open any ports. Because of this I was thinking of sending XML over HTTP. So, is it better to use WCF or REST on the server side? Or WCF with REST?
I'm curious about your "customers with firewalls" requirement. Sockets with binary data or XML over HTTP can use any port (not just port 80), and I'm curious if your device will be "listening" on the network, or just making an outbound connection. If your device is listening, you will need to open a port on the firewall. Making an outbound connection ("phoning home") is much easier on the firewall.
So I think you could use sockets and binary data. However, I have faced similar issues on the last two projects, and I really wanted to implement WCF using REST on the embedded device, but no one else wanted to do it - I'm hoping someone else will be first, and publish some results!
Good Luck! (and post your results!)
I've created a service for one of my apps. How do i create a system tray component in VB.net that can be used to monitor the progress of the service? Is there a way to have this installed via tcpip on multiple client machines such as those that are for our employees?
We do exactly that here, with the server running a really basic HTTP server on a configurable port on a separate thread that returns status in an XML format (nothing else, just that) -- the client just uses a web request to get the XML, before parsing it and displaying it appropriately.
This approach also allows for future extensibility (detailed status, sending service control commands, adding an association to an XSLT file elsewhere for use with a normal web browser, etc.)
You could use WCF for this. Using WCF your service would open up an EndPoint which would expose status information to callers. You could then build a tray icon application that can be deployed to the employees workstations. The tray icon application could periodically poll the WCF service the your Windows Service is hosting and get status information. I know #Johan mentioned Remoting already and this is a similar approach. I'd recommend WCF though as the programming API is more simple, IMHO, and WCF will give you more flexibility with regards to network transports, etc.
I guess your question is not about how to actually do the "traybar"-thing, but how to communicate with the service to get the information you want to show in the monitor/traybar-program?
It can be done in many ways, API is one way, use sendmessage/postmessage/getmessage is one way to make 2 running programs communicate with each other without having to store anything in files or databases first.
DDE is another way. If it needs to do the stuff via net then there is something called NetDDE, but I havent done anything with NetDDE I cant help anything there.
But about the API and DDE, feel free to ask more questions if you want some clarification.
I'll take the second question: Is there a way to remotely install software on client machines?
Yes. However it is very dependent on your environment. For example, if you have an Active Directory domain, you can use group policy to force installation of software on the client boxes.
If you don't like that or if you aren't on active directory, you can buy something like Altiris to push installs down.
Another option would be to use login scripts which would run a custom program to detect if your program is installed and take appropriate action. But then you are probably better off buying Altiris.
For the comunication part, i have used remoting before, and this works very well. With a little bit of configuration, you can even get it working to another machine.