Chapter 7. Windows Services

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Windows services are an important concept in Windows development. A service is a long-running application that typically executes in its own user session. A service can be set to automatically start when the operating system boots and can run without the user having to be logged in. Services can run under separate user accounts that do not require an actual user to be logged into the operating system. This makes services ideal for applications that must run all the time because they do not interfere with other users working on the same system. Services are usually server-specific.

In this chapter, we will discuss creating, interacting with, installing, and debugging Windows services created with Visual Basic .NET. The Visual Basic .NET language, coupled with the Microsoft .NET Framework, provides a wonderful platform for developing Windows services. For those who are new to Windows services, a quick introduction follows .

Windows Services and Visual Basic 6

Visual Basic 6 developers have long awaited the day in when they can easily, confidently, and reliably create and deploy Windows NT services. Of course, several "hacks" have been available to help you get a service up and running in Visual Basic 6, but most have been fairly inflexible , inelegant, and unreliable. These have included ActiveX controls, third-party components or libraries, and services that are essentially hand-rolled with Win32 API calls. The latter have proved problematic due to the threading behavior inherent in Visual Basic 6. We now have reason to celebrate because the Microsoft .NET Framework has built-in support for Windows services, so Visual Basic programmers can finally create Windows services in an easy, recommended, and supported manner.

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