Can I use WCF for communicating (sending message) between 2 windows service?

Question

Can I use WCF for communicating between 2 windows service? If yes, How?

Answer 1

It depends on the type of message you want to transfer. There is a lot of possible solutions:

• MSMQ messages
• Duplex contracts
• Named pipes

Basically you need to setup a WCF service on each windows service. You can use the WCF 4.0 discovery features to dynamically find the each service.

Answer 2

Yes, It is possible. You can use ServiceHost class to host a WCF service in a windows service without dependency to IIS.

Answer 3

Sure; you'd usually define a service contract (interface) which the two services will use to exchange messages; then one of the windows services would host a WCF service (in this case, where the two services are in the same machine, you'd usually use a local-only binding, such as named pipes). Then the second win service can act as a client for the WCF service on the other windows services. Is there any specific issue you're facing?