HL7Connect is a windows system service. It can be stopped and restarted through the windows service interface. Users interact with HL7Connect through a web server that allows them to configure and control its behaviour.

A user has asked for the ability to restart HL7Connect through the web interface. The notion here is that the user doesn’t need to be allocated the right to start and stop services on the server that hosts HL7Connect. This is actually quite common – the HL7Connect administrator works for a different organisation or branch/department, and while they have full control over HL7Connect, they aren’t considered appropriate to have the authority to restart services on the server that hosts HL7Connect – which often performs other services too.

I’m kind of stuck on deciding whether this is a good idea or not. On the one hand, there’s the rationale above, which argues that providing the ability to restart the service through the web interface is a good idea. On the other hand, first of all, it’s not always true that HL7Connect would have the authority to start and stop services on the server itself. By default, the install sets the service to run in the local system context, but users often change this. But more importantly, I think that the system administrators dole out authority to restart carefully, and wouldn’t be impressed by HL7Connect subverting that.

What do HL7Connect users think? Comments are welcome.

p.s. The telnet interface offers a command to stop the service “shutdown”, and a command to terminate the process immediately (“die”). These are provided for help with debugging C# extensions, and to allow a user to terminate an HL7Connect that won’t shut down cleanly. These do rather subvert the windows authority process, but they are provided for very special cases.