Hello I have a few WCF services that are currently being self hosted, in a very basic NT Service. I want to expand my application to add provisioning of WCF Services, and updates, as well as isolation (I want each WCF Service to be in its own AppDomain). These WCF Services contain logic that needs to be run on a regular basis, pinging the database, and getting information from external devices so that when a request comes in the data is readily available.

I'm thinking about trying out Windows Activation Service, because i really like the provisioning, and isolation that comes with a managed services infrastructure. If I didn't use WAS I would essentially have to write the same code myself.

From what I understand though WAS does not really support the model of having a service that is running before someone actually calls a method on the service. the article I read here

MSDN Article Link

states "That means in essence that out-of-the-box WAS hosting is not something that is really suited for sessionful or singleton services. It is more suitable for stateless per-call services."

it does say that "Out of the box" so I'm wondering if anyone has used WAS to host a WCF service that really behaves more like an NT Service (starting and stopping independantly of having a method called upon it). Or any other ideas would be great. I was planning on writting this infrastructure myself, to host WCF services in a custom ServiceHost, and put their execution in a seporate AppDomain, as well as allow for provision of these services after initial installation, along with updates. However, I would MUCH MUCH MUCH rather not own that code if I don't have to.

thanks

Joshua