This Windows console application MPipeServer and the MPipeClient application are used to test components for using windows named pipes for interprocess communication across user processes.

One of my friends has a dental practice that uses a poorly written client/server software. The server software is running on a Microsoft Windows Server, and
it handles requests from client software running on Windows workstations. The server was written as a user application that has to be manually started by logging into the Windows Server and clicking on the server application. When the dental practice starts up in the morning, someone logs into the Windows Server and starts up the server software.

The problem is that the server application locks files that needs to be automatically backed up nightly. The server application should have been written as a Windows Service so that it automatically starts up without user intervention, and can be shutdown by anyone for backups. I am sure the design was caused to some business requirements that forced this engineered solution.

It is very easy to forcefully shutdown the server process by killing it, but I am not sure if files would be corrupted in the process. So, I though it would be nice to have a software that runs in the context of the user that logs into the machine, and gracefully shuts down the server process by sending WM_QUIT messages within the context of that user.

There are probably many other solutions that I had not though off that can just solve the problem directly. But, I wanted to practice Interprocess Communication and the Security Model for Windows. I decided to use Named Pipes for communicating requests between processes. The code of this project uses reusable components for Interprocess communication using named pipes, as well manipulating the security elements found in the Windows Operating System.

The following links is for the direct download of the 32 bit executable with an MD5 digest of the executable.

Windows 32-bit Binary : MPipeServer.exe

MD5 Digest for binary : MPipeServer.exe.md5