Managed Services Roundup
• CommentsA recent Tip of the Day prompted me to update one of my Managed Services posts, and it seems like a good time to write out a quick summary.
First, what is a “managed service”? We’re all familiar with the normal applications that Windows runs; there’s the traditional desktop app as well as the newer Win8 apps. These apps interact with the user. But Windows also runs another kind of process: Win32 services. A Win32 service is an application (without a UI) that runs all the time, whether a user is logged on or not. And the .NET (full) framework supports writing Win32 services on .NET - what I call a “managed service.”
I’ve got a number of resources on my blog for writing managed services:
- Basics of managed services, which helps fill in the gaps in the .NET documentation (unfortunately, the MSDN docs are insufficient to actually write a managed service). I also cover the threading model and one common “gotcha” about the default current directory.
- Services and the network, where I describe how drive mappings (a per-user concept) have no place in Win32 services.
- Services and user interfaces, where I explain why services should not have user interfaces.
