Windows Service App

[japanreddy]

I have written a couple of windows services apps. when I test them they run fine and do what they are supposed to do. But after a couple of days or so, they are still running but do not perform the tasks. Any suggestions, if what could be causing it ! Would really appreciate any help. Vinayak Katkam japanreddy@yahoo.com

[Heath Stewart]

Make sure you're cleaning up code. If you use any IDisposable implementations (ADO.NET connections and commands are a good example), make sure you call Dispose on them when finished. It's a good idea to using a using block to make sure resources are released:

using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(...))
{
// More code; now even if an exception occurs, the connection is disposed
// and managed and unmanaged resources - most important - are released
// immediately.
}

It's also a good idea to instrument your service (using the Event Viewer, WMI events, etc.) so that you know what's going on. Obviously this would be a hard problem to debug (given the amount of time before things start going haywire), so instrumenting your app and responding to events will let you know when a problem starts. Read some of the exception management and instrumentation blocks in the MSDN Patterns and Practices[^] section.

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