What are some techniques to monitor multiple instances of a piece of software?
- by Geo Ego
It was recommended that I ask this question here by a member of StackOverflow.
I have a piece of self-serve kiosk software that will be running at multiple sites. I'd like to monitor their status remotely.
The kiosk application itself is pretty much finished. I am now in the process of creating a piece of software that will monitor all of the kiosks from a central location so that the customer can view particular details remotely (for instance, how many bills are in the acceptor's cash cartridge, what customer is currently logged in, etc.). Because I am in such an early stage of development, my options are quite open. I understand that I'm not giving very many qualifications, but I'd like to try to get a good variety of potential solutions. Some details:
Kiosk software is a VB6 app running on Windows Embedded
Monitoring software will be run on a modern desktop version of Windows (either XP, Vista, or 7)
Database is SQL Server 2008
My initial idea was to develop a .NET app that would simply report the last database transaction for each kiosk at a set interval (say every second or so) but I'd really like for the kiosk software to report its status in real-time. I'm not exactly sure where to begin in terms of what modifications may need to be made to the kiosk software, and what the monitoring software will require. Links to articles on these topics would be most welcome.
