! For the sake of simplifying things I will refer to Windows Store applications (also known as Metro or Modern UI) as "app" and to common desktop applications as "application" !
I believe this is still one of the most unclear yet important questions concerning app-development for developers who already have established applications on the market: How to manage communication between apps and applications on a Windows 8 system? (please let's not start a debate on principles - there're so many use cases where this is really required!)
I basically read hundrets of articles in the last few days but still it remains unclear how to proceed doing it right from the first time. Mainly because I found several conflicting information. With my question here I'd like to re-approach this problem from the viewpoint of the final Windows 8 possibilities.
Given situation:
- App and application run on same system
- 1:1 communication
- Application is native (written in Delphi)
- Administrator or if required even system privileges are available for the application
- In 90% of the use cases the app requests an action to be performed by the application and receives some textual result. The app shouldn't be left nor frozen for this!
- In 10% the application performs an action (triggered by some event) and informs the app - the result might be: showing certain info on the tile or in the already running and active app or if possible running the app / bringing it to the foreground.
Now the "simple" question is, how to achieve this?
- Is local webserver access actually allowed now? (I believe it wasn't for a long time but now is since the final release)
- WCF? (-> apparently MS doesn't recommend that anymore)
- HTTP requests on a