CNamedPipe

While using pipes is a fairly easy job in the WindowsNT platforms, starting with Windows 9x editions this can get overly complicated, especially since the pipes are no longer supported. Generally speaking,  pipes have been used to facilitate inter-process communications in the Windows console, where the standard input can be sent via a MORE command.

The CNamedPipe was designed to be an MFC class to encapsulate Named Pipes. The class encapsulates the Named Pipe Inter Process Communication mechanism as provided in Win32. The class provides a thin veneer of the SDK API meaning that all the richness the SDK provides is available through the class. The class also provides auto cleanup and is UNICODE enabled with build configurations provided.

One of the advantages of using a named pipe stems from the fact that it provides a smooth way to send single line requests to an OpenEdge background session. What this means is that multiple users can send requests using the same pipe. Each request that reached its destination is, afterwards, removed from the pipe, thus enabling you to use the message handler procedure loop indefinitely. It is considerably simpler to send a one-line request than having to write a complete response to an ordinary file.