I am sketching the architecture for a set of programs that share various interrelated objects stored in a database. I want one of the programs to act as a service which provides a higher level interface for operations on these objects, and the other programs to access the objects through that service.
I am currently aiming for Python and the Django framework as the technologies to implement that service with. I’m pretty sure I figure how to daemonize the Python program in Linux. However, it is an optional spec item that the system should support Windows. I have little experience with Windows programming and no experience at all with Windows services.
Is it possible to run a Python programs as a Windows service (i. e. run it automatically without user login)? I won’t necessarily have to implement this part, but I need a rough idea how it would be done in order to decide whether to design along these lines.
Edit: Thanks for all the answers so far, they are quite comprehensive. I would like to know one more thing: How is Windows aware of my service? Can I manage it with the native Windows utilities? What is the equivalent of putting a start/stop script in /etc/init.d?
