Windows Service VS web Process

Question

I have created a message Queue here which is basically on a single thread and sending email one after another from the database. First I thought that since it is a continuous process, it has to be on windows service and it sounded like an ideal solution but not that I talked to my manager, he said that it would be better if it is in the same repository as the entire project and if I put in a while(true) statement. that way while deploying to the production, we do not need to worry about installing any windows service or anything. But what I think here is that if we do it that way then there would be a lot of unwanted pressure on the web server.

I am not sure which way to go. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I'd go with a separate Windows service.
With this service being party of your application, its life time is dependant on the life time of the application pool process (depending on the version of the IIS you are using, of course), and this way whenever youll choose to change the application pool settings, you will have to remember ur message job is also dependant on it, and if you set up any recycle settings for the app pool, you might have hard time uynderstanding why your job suddenly stop working or anything like that.

Answer 2

I would definitely suggest a windows service for processing the email queue in the background. Here are some points you can suggest to your manager:

1. The service could be kept in the same repository as another project.
2. Installing and upgrading services is very easy. Use installutil and add a batch file to your project for installing/uninstalling. Upgrading is a matter of stopping the service, updating the service .exe , and starting the service again.
3. All of this could technically be automated as well as part of your deployment process.

Answer 3

You can also go the route of simply writing a command line application and then wrapping it with something like Service+ to make it behave like a service. You also get other features like being able to run it like a command line application if you like (whenever you want to run it) or having it launch/execute from some other application as needed. You can build in a variety of behaviors as well... continuous mode, perhaps process 1 (or 100 or whatever) at a time then exit (and let Service+ restart it), or whatever else you may need.