Professional Visual Basic 2012 and .NET 4.5 Programming

Summary

This chapter presented a general overview of what a Windows Service is and how to create one with Visual Basic. The techniques in this chapter can be used for many different types of background service, including the following:

• Automatically moving statistical files from a database server to a Web server
• Pushing general files across computers and platforms
• A watchdog timer to ensure that a connection is always available
• An application to move and process FTP files, or indeed files received from any source

While Visual Basic cannot be used to create every type of Windows Service, it is effective for creating many of the most useful ones. The .NET Framework classes for Windows Services make this creation relatively straightforward. The designers generate much of the routine code needed, enabling you, as a developer, to concentrate on the code specific to your particular Windows Service.

In the next chapter you are going to take a deeper look at how .NET handles assemblies and versioning. The chapter will also go into more detail on leveraging reflection to dynamically load classes.