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Is there a way to call a function to run on all instances of a Windows Forms application across a LAN?
I have an application which contains a dashboard of their own Joblist. I want another user on another PC to create and allocate a job to this user. Once created and saved, I would like the method GetJobs(); to refresh. I've not done anything this advanced yet, so please go easy :)
Chris Walsh has excellent advice in his comment. That said, it is possible for Windows Forms applications to communicate with each other, and the simplest method, for me anyway, is WCF, self-hosted server. Typically the server code will not be running in the UI thread -- at least I don't recommend it. In fact, all WCF is best kept running in a background thread in a Windows Forms application, to avoid blocking the UI. WCF has lots of error conditions you will need to handle.
Another thing you might want to look at is MSMQ, now called Message Queueing. It can store a queue of jobs for you, and it won't lose them if the power is lost.
I assume you have some SQL Server Express Edition installed as the database backend.
This way you can connect to the database using some authentication, and add the job's directly there.
Then on the other computer, add a refresh button or poll for changes. This has the advantage that you don't need to write a service by yourself, and jobs can be created even if the user is not there and his PC is switched off.
You need just one server which hosts the database.
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I apologize for the multiple questions but I am having a hard time finding information on exactly what I am trying to do here.
Background:
I am working on a project that involves communicating with several server ports simultaneously that needs to somewhat scale. Some background on the project is I have a web application for users to pass commands to a console application. This console application will then send those commands to a specific port on a preexisting server through a tcp client.
My specific questions regard the console application communicating with the preexisting server.
My idea:
So my idea is to use a producer-many consumers thread scheme. I will need to be able to communicate with up to 300 different ports simultaneously and constantly through TCP connections. This console application will run as a windows service or something along those lines.
Question 1:
I am thinking of using a ConcurrentDictionary<string,ConcurrentQueue>() to track a queue of commands for every specific thread. Is there a better way to do this? I ask because I assume every thread would need access to the entire Dictionary of commands correct? Maybe this is a good approach but I have never done something like this.
Question 2:
Does spawning a single thread for each port I need to send commands to on the server make sense? The only reason I am thinking of doing this is because I will need to keep a TCP connection open for a very long time. The user can choose when to shut down the tool/connection. The only requirement really is this needs to be communicating for days at a time. The MOST I will reach is about 300 threads using this approach.
Question 3:
Obviously using an asynchronous approach is going to be necessary for this to scale well. Can anyone point me to some GOOD not out dated resources of the PROPER way to implement something like this asynchronously. I am willing to even pay for a book / online course if you have a good recommendation. The Microsoft docs are not very helpful because they do a scheme of 1 send and 1 read and then close the tcp connection.
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Hello i have an application working with window service and i want to start its service at background, i mean even when the application is not running the service should run at a specific time for example: start(9am) and then stop the service at (6pm).
Do you have any idea ?
Thanks in advance !
If the PC is turned off then there is no way you can start a service. You need to tun on the PC and Login fist. There are some Services that can start on boot up though, you can start an executable after boot up by adding it to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\BootExecute. Never thought I'd see such question on StackOverflow
A service can't run if the PC is switched off. I assume that you want the software to run even if the user is not logged in.
If you want to run software without logging in, you won't have a user interface. Windows Programs without user interface are called services, and they can be started manually, or automatically whenever the computer is switched on.
As you have a windows forms application, you'll have to separate it into two applications: one with the user interface parts, and one with the parts that you want to run as soon as the computer is switched on. The latter part has to be put in the windows service software.
Whenever an operator logs in, he starts the windows forms program that holds the user interface parts. This program communicates with the already windows service.
There are numerous examples, also here on stackoverflow that will help you how to create and start a windows service and how to communicate with a running service.
That's a server not a service, NOTHING runs on a personal computer when it is turned off, even when servers shutdown, nothing runs on them too.
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I am working on a WPF application that requires access to a remote database. The problem is:
The app does not have consistent access to the internet
There are multiple instances of the application running
My thought was to get a local copy of the database, log all the interactions with the local database (or someway to queue the interactions for later use), then have the option to sync the remote and local database (send the local commands to the remote database, drop the local database, get the remote database).
This article on MSDN was pretty helpful, but I have some concerns. The main purpose of the queue is to store updates and inserts to the local table, but this route does not look like it stores the parameters for use (has them commented).
Any suggestions or thoughts on the best way to handle this?
Thanks!
You should probably look at message queues (the Microsoft version is called MSMQ and is built into Windows. Other message queues are available). They are designed for exactly this sort of scenario.
Essentially, your application write an event to it's local message queue. This will attempt to send it to the remote queue (on the database in this case) periodically, providing for reliable message delivery.
On the database queue you typically have a listener watching the queue and writing any events it receives to the database.
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I'm trying to create a simple multiplayer game. As I understand the main principle is to make clients communicate ether directly to each other or to the server. Since I want some game data to be available online on my website, I'm inclined to create database that users will be connected to.
Is this valid?
Is SQL/MySQL good idea to use in such scenario?
Would windows azure be any help?
Please help me. I really need some guidance here.
If you want to store game data for use on a web site, you will definitely want to store it in some sort of database. Just so you know, SQL is a querying language for databases, MySQL is a DBMS (Database Management system) that you use SQL to "talk" to.
However, you certainly don't want to store ALL of your game interaction in a database, as database operations tend to take a long time (at least as far as a computer is concerned). Your server should have some sort of socket (probably TCP) that is talking to all the clients, passing messages and so forth.
The class reading from this socket would raise events or otherwise update the database for the information you want to be displayed on your website. Windows Azure would be a perfectly valid hosting platform for the website/server app, and so would pretty much any other web hosting solution. Some of the socket code could be easier going through Azure, so that may give it an advantage when choosing your host.
Please let me know if I can provide any more information.
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I would like input on the design I currently have planned.
Basically, I have some number of external instrumentation, each of which should always be running, collecting specific data. My thought was to create a service for each, always running and polling the instruments, performing logging, etc. There could be one instrument, or there could be 40.
However, I need one application to consume all this data, run some math on it, and do the charting, display, emailing, etc. The kicker is that even if this application is not running, the services should constantly be consuming data. Also, these services should almost always be supposed to run on the same machines as the client application itself, but the ability to network them (like .NET Remoting used to do) could be an interesting feature.
My question is... is this the best design? If it is, how do I go about doing the communication between services and application? I've looked into WCF, but it seems to be geared towards request-response web services, not something that is continually streaming data to anything that might listen to it. Alternatively, should I have these services contact some other Web Service using WCF, that then compiles the data for use in a thin client viewer that polls the web service often?
Any links and resources would be greatly appreciated. .NET namespaces for me to research are also appreciated. If I wasn't clear about something let me know.
Just a thought....but have you considered perhaps adding a backend database? All services could collate data and persist it then your application that needs to process the information can just query the database rather than setting up loads of IPC between the services.
WCF can handle streaming. It can also use MSMQ as a transport, which will ensure that no messages are lost, even if your instruments begin producing large quantities of data.