Which solution is better for schedules task? Console application or windows service?

Question

I have a "MULTI-LEVEL" XML file that I will be getting on daily basis and I want to accomplish following tasks:
1) I have to read and parse the "MULTI-LEVEL" XML data
2) Then I have to set or create some kind of .net service (c#) that read the xml and parse the data once a day (daily)?
3) Now I have SOAP service from other software where I want to feed this XML data to. The schedules service will compare the XML data with software data and update (or add) based on the comparision.
For this task, I come to conclusion that there are 2 best ways to do this:
1) Create a console application and use windows task scheduler to run it everyday
2) Create a windows service that runs in the background
Which is a better way (or reliable)  solution to do this task? Please advise

Answer 1

There are several things to keep in mind when writing an app that is designed to run without a user logged in. One of the most common mistakes is requiring some sort of user input.  Since the task will run without user intervention you don't want
any sort of calls to Console.ReadLine, MessageBox.Show, etc.  They will cause the task to freeze and eventually need to be terminated.  You also don't want to rely on any sort of desktop apps running since a user may or may not be logged on at the
time.
Also be aware that a task can be scheduled to run under any user context.  As such you either need to ensure it runs under an account with sufficient privileges or that your app needs no special privileges.  You mentioned you tried to run it from
bin\debug but you most likely have your project under your Documents directory.  Only you would have permissions to that folder and therefore will run into issues if the task is run under a different context.  You also mentioned you put it in the
C:\ but users don't have write privileges to that folder and therefore if you tried to write a file out it would fail. If you need to read/write files then you should pick a common location that all users have access to or at least the one that will run the
scheduled task. Be aware that, by default, Task Scheduler will not run a task elevated. You need to check the option to run elevated when you configure the user to run the task under.
One of the key things to ensure you do with a task is verify it is working properly as a normal app.  You should also ensure that you have good logging so that if it does fail you can trace down the failure more easily.  One common thing that people
tend to do in console apps is put a try-catch around the main function and display a message if an unhandled exception occurs. This is going to cause problems in a task.  Simply log the exception and rethrow it so Task Scheduler will flag the run as a
failure.
If you still cannot figure out why your task is failing then please add some logging and then tell us what code is being run at the time and what the failure is.