In Brief

• A service runs in the background, without an associated user session. It can even start running when no user has logged on to the machine.

• A server must be installed before it can be used. Add an installer to your project, and then run the application with the Install option. This need only be done once.

• Because a service has no user interface, it must use non-interactive methods of communication such as sending email, writing to the event log, or writing to files on the hard drive when errors occur.

• To send email, use Web::Mail::SmtpMail .

• To write to the event log, use Diagnostics::EventLog . Set the log name and source before writing an entry.

• To debug a service, insert a pause in the function called by OnStart() , start the service, and attach the debugger to the running process.