IPC Mechanisms in C# - Usage and Best Practices

Question

I have used IPC in Win32 code a while ago - critical sections, events, and semaphores.

How is the scene in the .NET environment? Are there any tutorial explaining all available options and when to use and why?

Answer 1

Most recent Microsoft's stuff in IPC is Windows Communication Foundation. Actually there is nothing new in the lower level (tcp, upd, named pipes etc) But WCF simplifies IPC development greatly.

Useful resource:

• Interprocess Communication with WCF on Dr. Dobb's portal
• WCF Communication Options in the .NET Framework 3.5

and of course MSDN on WCF

Answer 2

Apart from the obvious (WCF), there is a ZeroMQ binding for C#/CLR which is pretty good:

http://www.zeromq.org/bindings:clr

Does message-oriented IPC, pub/sub and various other strategies with much less code and config than WCF.

It's also at least an order of magnitude faster than anything else and has less latency if you require low latency comms.

With respects to semaphores, locks, mutexes etc. If you share by communicating rather than communicate by sharing, you'll have a whole load less hassle than the traditional paradigm.