What are named pipes

Question

What are they and how do they work   Context happens to be SQL Server

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This is an exeprt from Technet  so not sure why the marked answer says named pipes are faster      Named Pipes vs  TCP IP Sockets  In a fast local area network  LAN  environment  Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol  TCP IP  Sockets and Named Pipes clients are comparable with regard to performance  However  the performance difference between the TCP IP Sockets and Named Pipes clients becomes apparent with slower networks  such as across wide area networks  WANs  or dial-up networks  This is because of the different ways the interprocess communication  IPC  mechanisms communicate between peers   For named pipes  network communications are typically more interactive  A peer does not send data until another peer asks for it using a read command  A network read typically involves a series of peek named pipes messages before it starts to read the data  These can be very costly in a slow network and cause excessive network traffic  which in turn affects other network clients   It is also important to clarify if you are talking about local pipes or network pipes  If the server application is running locally on the computer that is running an instance of SQL Server  the local Named Pipes protocol is an option  Local named pipes runs in kernel mode and is very fast   For TCP IP Sockets  data transmissions are more streamlined and have less overhead  Data transmissions can also take advantage of TCP IP Sockets performance enhancement mechanisms such as windowing  delayed acknowledgements  and so on  This can be very helpful in a slow network  Depending on the type of applications  such performance differences can be significant   TCP IP Sockets also support a backlog queue  This can provide a limited smoothing effect compared to named pipes that could lead to pipe-busy errors when you are trying to connect to SQL Server   Generally  TCP IP is preferred in a slow LAN  WAN  or dial-up network  whereas named pipes can be a better choice when network speed is not the issue  as it offers more functionality  ease of use  and configuration options

User · Answer

Inter-process communication  mostly  for Windows Applications   Similar to using sockets to communicate between applications in Unix   MSDN

User · Answer

Both on Windows and POSIX systems  named-pipes provide a way for inter-process communication to occur among processes running on the same machine   What named pipes give you is a way to send your data without having the performance penalty of involving the network stack   Just like you have a server listening to a IP address port for incoming requests  a server can also set up a named pipe which can listen for requests   In either cases  the client process  or the DB access library  must know the specific address  or pipe name  to send the request    Often  a commonly used standard default exists  much like port 80 for HTTP  SQL server uses port 1433 in TCP IP      pipe sql query for a named pipe    By setting up additional named pipes  you can have multiple DB servers running  each with its own request listeners   The advantage of named pipes is that it  is usually much faster  and frees up network stack resources   -- BTW  in the Windows world  you can also have named pipes to remote machines -- but in that case  the named pipe is transported over TCP IP  so you will lose performance    Use named pipes for local machine communication

User · Answer

According to Wikipedia            A traditional pipe is  unnamed  because it exists anonymously and persists only for as long as the process is running  A named pipe is system-persistent and exists beyond the life of the process and must be  unlinked  or deleted once it is no longer being used  Processes generally attach to the named pipe  usually appearing as a file  to perform IPC  inter-process communication

User · Answer

Both on Windows and POSIX systems  named-pipes provide a way for inter-process communication to occur among processes running on the same machine   What named pipes give you is a way to send your data without having the performance penalty of involving the network stack   Just like you have a server listening to a IP address port for incoming requests  a server can also set up a named pipe which can listen for requests   In either cases  the client process  or the DB access library  must know the specific address  or pipe name  to send the request    Often  a commonly used standard default exists  much like port 80 for HTTP  SQL server uses port 1433 in TCP IP      pipe sql query for a named pipe    By setting up additional named pipes  you can have multiple DB servers running  each with its own request listeners   The advantage of named pipes is that it  is usually much faster  and frees up network stack resources   -- BTW  in the Windows world  you can also have named pipes to remote machines -- but in that case  the named pipe is transported over TCP IP  so you will lose performance    Use named pipes for local machine communication

User · Answer

Named pipes is a windows system for inter-process communication  In the case of SQL server  if the server is on the same machine as the client  then it is possible to use named pipes to tranfer the data  as opposed to TCP IP

User · Answer

Inter-process communication  mostly  for Windows Applications   Similar to using sockets to communicate between applications in Unix   MSDN

User · Answer

Linux Pipes First In First Out  FIFO  interproccess communication mechanism   Unnamed Pipes On the command line  represented by a     between two commands     Named Pipes A FIFO special file  Once created  you can use the pipe just like a normal file open  close  write  read  etc    To create a named pipe  called  myPipe   from the command line  man page      mkfifo myPipe     To create a named pipe from c  where  pathname  is the name you would like the pipe to have and  mode  contains the permissions you want the pipe to have  man page       include  lt sys types h gt   include  lt sys stat h gt  int mkfifo const char  pathname  mode t mode

User · Answer

Unix and Windows both have things called  Named pipes   but they behave differently  On Unix  a named pipe is a one-way street which typically has just one reader and one writer - the writer writes  and the reader reads  you get it   On Windows  the thing called a  Named pipe  is an IPC object more like a TCP socket - things can flow both ways and there is some metadata  You can obtain the credentials of the thing on the other end etc    Unix named pipes appear as a special file in the filesystem and can be accessed with normal file IO commands including the shell  Windows ones don t  and need to be opened with a special system call  after which they behave mostly like a normal win32 handle    Even more confusing  Unix has something called a  Unix socket  or AF UNIX socket  which works more like  but not completely like  a win32  named pipe   being bidirectional

User · Answer

Linux Pipes First In First Out  FIFO  interproccess communication mechanism   Unnamed Pipes On the command line  represented by a     between two commands     Named Pipes A FIFO special file  Once created  you can use the pipe just like a normal file open  close  write  read  etc    To create a named pipe  called  myPipe   from the command line  man page      mkfifo myPipe     To create a named pipe from c  where  pathname  is the name you would like the pipe to have and  mode  contains the permissions you want the pipe to have  man page       include  lt sys types h gt   include  lt sys stat h gt  int mkfifo const char  pathname  mode t mode

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Compare  echo  test    wc   to  mkdnod apipe p wc apipe   wc will block until  echo  test   gt  apipe   executes

User · Answer

Inter-process communication  mostly  for Windows Applications   Similar to using sockets to communicate between applications in Unix   MSDN

User · Answer

According to Wikipedia            A traditional pipe is  unnamed  because it exists anonymously and persists only for as long as the process is running  A named pipe is system-persistent and exists beyond the life of the process and must be  unlinked  or deleted once it is no longer being used  Processes generally attach to the named pipe  usually appearing as a file  to perform IPC  inter-process communication

User · Answer

Linux Pipes First In First Out  FIFO  interproccess communication mechanism   Unnamed Pipes On the command line  represented by a     between two commands     Named Pipes A FIFO special file  Once created  you can use the pipe just like a normal file open  close  write  read  etc    To create a named pipe  called  myPipe   from the command line  man page      mkfifo myPipe     To create a named pipe from c  where  pathname  is the name you would like the pipe to have and  mode  contains the permissions you want the pipe to have  man page       include  lt sys types h gt   include  lt sys stat h gt  int mkfifo const char  pathname  mode t mode

User · Answer

Unix and Windows both have things called  Named pipes   but they behave differently  On Unix  a named pipe is a one-way street which typically has just one reader and one writer - the writer writes  and the reader reads  you get it   On Windows  the thing called a  Named pipe  is an IPC object more like a TCP socket - things can flow both ways and there is some metadata  You can obtain the credentials of the thing on the other end etc    Unix named pipes appear as a special file in the filesystem and can be accessed with normal file IO commands including the shell  Windows ones don t  and need to be opened with a special system call  after which they behave mostly like a normal win32 handle    Even more confusing  Unix has something called a  Unix socket  or AF UNIX socket  which works more like  but not completely like  a win32  named pipe   being bidirectional

User · Answer

Pipes are a way of streaming data between applications  Under Linux I use this all the time to stream the output of one process into another  This is anonymous because the destination app has no idea where that input-stream comes from  It doesn t need to   A named pipe is just a way of actively hooking onto an existing pipe and hoovering-up its data  It s for situations where the provider doesn t know what clients will be eating the data

User · Answer

Compare  echo  test    wc   to  mkdnod apipe p wc apipe   wc will block until  echo  test   gt  apipe   executes

User · Answer

Inter-process communication  mostly  for Windows Applications   Similar to using sockets to communicate between applications in Unix   MSDN

User · Answer

This is an exeprt from Technet  so not sure why the marked answer says named pipes are faster      Named Pipes vs  TCP IP Sockets  In a fast local area network  LAN  environment  Transmission Control Protocol Internet Protocol  TCP IP  Sockets and Named Pipes clients are comparable with regard to performance  However  the performance difference between the TCP IP Sockets and Named Pipes clients becomes apparent with slower networks  such as across wide area networks  WANs  or dial-up networks  This is because of the different ways the interprocess communication  IPC  mechanisms communicate between peers   For named pipes  network communications are typically more interactive  A peer does not send data until another peer asks for it using a read command  A network read typically involves a series of peek named pipes messages before it starts to read the data  These can be very costly in a slow network and cause excessive network traffic  which in turn affects other network clients   It is also important to clarify if you are talking about local pipes or network pipes  If the server application is running locally on the computer that is running an instance of SQL Server  the local Named Pipes protocol is an option  Local named pipes runs in kernel mode and is very fast   For TCP IP Sockets  data transmissions are more streamlined and have less overhead  Data transmissions can also take advantage of TCP IP Sockets performance enhancement mechanisms such as windowing  delayed acknowledgements  and so on  This can be very helpful in a slow network  Depending on the type of applications  such performance differences can be significant   TCP IP Sockets also support a backlog queue  This can provide a limited smoothing effect compared to named pipes that could lead to pipe-busy errors when you are trying to connect to SQL Server   Generally  TCP IP is preferred in a slow LAN  WAN  or dial-up network  whereas named pipes can be a better choice when network speed is not the issue  as it offers more functionality  ease of use  and configuration options

User · Answer

Named pipes is a windows system for inter-process communication  In the case of SQL server  if the server is on the same machine as the client  then it is possible to use named pipes to tranfer the data  as opposed to TCP IP

User · Answer

Named pipes in a unix linux context can be used to make two different shells to communicate since a shell just can t share anything with another   Furthermore  one script instantiated twice in the same shell can t share anything through the two instances  I found a use for named pipes when coding a daemon that contains the start   and stop   function  and I wanted to use the same script to perform the two actions   Without named pipes  or any kind of semaphore  starting the script in the background is not a problem  The thing is when it finishes you just can t access the instance in background   So when you want to send him the stop command you just can t  running the same script without named pipes and calling the stop   function won t do anything since you are actually running another instance   The solution was to implement two pipes  one READ and the other WRITE when you start the daemon  Then make him  among its other tasks  listen to the READ pipe  Then the Stop   function contains a command that will write a message in the pipe  that will be handled by the background running script that will perform an exit 0  This way our second instance of the same script has only on task to do  tell the first instance to stop   This way one and only one script can start and stop itself   Of course you have different ways to do it by triggering the stop via a touch for example  But this one is nice and interesting to code

User · Answer

Compare  echo  test    wc   to  mkdnod apipe p wc apipe   wc will block until  echo  test   gt  apipe   executes

User · Answer

According to Wikipedia            A traditional pipe is  unnamed  because it exists anonymously and persists only for as long as the process is running  A named pipe is system-persistent and exists beyond the life of the process and must be  unlinked  or deleted once it is no longer being used  Processes generally attach to the named pipe  usually appearing as a file  to perform IPC  inter-process communication

User · Answer

Pipes are a way of streaming data between applications  Under Linux I use this all the time to stream the output of one process into another  This is anonymous because the destination app has no idea where that input-stream comes from  It doesn t need to   A named pipe is just a way of actively hooking onto an existing pipe and hoovering-up its data  It s for situations where the provider doesn t know what clients will be eating the data

User · Answer

Named pipes is a windows system for inter-process communication  In the case of SQL server  if the server is on the same machine as the client  then it is possible to use named pipes to tranfer the data  as opposed to TCP IP

User · Answer

Linux Pipes First In First Out  FIFO  interproccess communication mechanism   Unnamed Pipes On the command line  represented by a     between two commands     Named Pipes A FIFO special file  Once created  you can use the pipe just like a normal file open  close  write  read  etc    To create a named pipe  called  myPipe   from the command line  man page      mkfifo myPipe     To create a named pipe from c  where  pathname  is the name you would like the pipe to have and  mode  contains the permissions you want the pipe to have  man page       include  lt sys types h gt   include  lt sys stat h gt  int mkfifo const char  pathname  mode t mode

User · Answer

Unix and Windows both have things called  Named pipes   but they behave differently  On Unix  a named pipe is a one-way street which typically has just one reader and one writer - the writer writes  and the reader reads  you get it   On Windows  the thing called a  Named pipe  is an IPC object more like a TCP socket - things can flow both ways and there is some metadata  You can obtain the credentials of the thing on the other end etc    Unix named pipes appear as a special file in the filesystem and can be accessed with normal file IO commands including the shell  Windows ones don t  and need to be opened with a special system call  after which they behave mostly like a normal win32 handle    Even more confusing  Unix has something called a  Unix socket  or AF UNIX socket  which works more like  but not completely like  a win32  named pipe   being bidirectional

User · Answer

Compare  echo  test    wc   to  mkdnod apipe p wc apipe   wc will block until  echo  test   gt  apipe   executes

User · Answer

Both on Windows and POSIX systems  named-pipes provide a way for inter-process communication to occur among processes running on the same machine   What named pipes give you is a way to send your data without having the performance penalty of involving the network stack   Just like you have a server listening to a IP address port for incoming requests  a server can also set up a named pipe which can listen for requests   In either cases  the client process  or the DB access library  must know the specific address  or pipe name  to send the request    Often  a commonly used standard default exists  much like port 80 for HTTP  SQL server uses port 1433 in TCP IP      pipe sql query for a named pipe    By setting up additional named pipes  you can have multiple DB servers running  each with its own request listeners   The advantage of named pipes is that it  is usually much faster  and frees up network stack resources   -- BTW  in the Windows world  you can also have named pipes to remote machines -- but in that case  the named pipe is transported over TCP IP  so you will lose performance    Use named pipes for local machine communication

User · Answer

Pipes are a way of streaming data between applications  Under Linux I use this all the time to stream the output of one process into another  This is anonymous because the destination app has no idea where that input-stream comes from  It doesn t need to   A named pipe is just a way of actively hooking onto an existing pipe and hoovering-up its data  It s for situations where the provider doesn t know what clients will be eating the data

User · Answer

Named pipes in a unix linux context can be used to make two different shells to communicate since a shell just can t share anything with another   Furthermore  one script instantiated twice in the same shell can t share anything through the two instances  I found a use for named pipes when coding a daemon that contains the start   and stop   function  and I wanted to use the same script to perform the two actions   Without named pipes  or any kind of semaphore  starting the script in the background is not a problem  The thing is when it finishes you just can t access the instance in background   So when you want to send him the stop command you just can t  running the same script without named pipes and calling the stop   function won t do anything since you are actually running another instance   The solution was to implement two pipes  one READ and the other WRITE when you start the daemon  Then make him  among its other tasks  listen to the READ pipe  Then the Stop   function contains a command that will write a message in the pipe  that will be handled by the background running script that will perform an exit 0  This way our second instance of the same script has only on task to do  tell the first instance to stop   This way one and only one script can start and stop itself   Of course you have different ways to do it by triggering the stop via a touch for example  But this one is nice and interesting to code

User · Answer

According to Wikipedia            A traditional pipe is  unnamed  because it exists anonymously and persists only for as long as the process is running  A named pipe is system-persistent and exists beyond the life of the process and must be  unlinked  or deleted once it is no longer being used  Processes generally attach to the named pipe  usually appearing as a file  to perform IPC  inter-process communication

User · Answer

Named pipes is a windows system for inter-process communication  In the case of SQL server  if the server is on the same machine as the client  then it is possible to use named pipes to tranfer the data  as opposed to TCP IP

User · Answer

Both on Windows and POSIX systems  named-pipes provide a way for inter-process communication to occur among processes running on the same machine   What named pipes give you is a way to send your data without having the performance penalty of involving the network stack   Just like you have a server listening to a IP address port for incoming requests  a server can also set up a named pipe which can listen for requests   In either cases  the client process  or the DB access library  must know the specific address  or pipe name  to send the request    Often  a commonly used standard default exists  much like port 80 for HTTP  SQL server uses port 1433 in TCP IP      pipe sql query for a named pipe    By setting up additional named pipes  you can have multiple DB servers running  each with its own request listeners   The advantage of named pipes is that it  is usually much faster  and frees up network stack resources   -- BTW  in the Windows world  you can also have named pipes to remote machines -- but in that case  the named pipe is transported over TCP IP  so you will lose performance    Use named pipes for local machine communication

User · Answer

Unix and Windows both have things called  Named pipes   but they behave differently  On Unix  a named pipe is a one-way street which typically has just one reader and one writer - the writer writes  and the reader reads  you get it   On Windows  the thing called a  Named pipe  is an IPC object more like a TCP socket - things can flow both ways and there is some metadata  You can obtain the credentials of the thing on the other end etc    Unix named pipes appear as a special file in the filesystem and can be accessed with normal file IO commands including the shell  Windows ones don t  and need to be opened with a special system call  after which they behave mostly like a normal win32 handle    Even more confusing  Unix has something called a  Unix socket  or AF UNIX socket  which works more like  but not completely like  a win32  named pipe   being bidirectional

User · Answer

Pipes are a way of streaming data between applications  Under Linux I use this all the time to stream the output of one process into another  This is anonymous because the destination app has no idea where that input-stream comes from  It doesn t need to   A named pipe is just a way of actively hooking onto an existing pipe and hoovering-up its data  It s for situations where the provider doesn t know what clients will be eating the data

[sql-server] What are named pipes?

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