What is the preferred way of passing data between two applications on the same system?

Question

I have an application (A) that needs to launch another application (B). I need to pass data between the applications. I can think of two approaches. The first is to open

Answer 1

Its always good to explore alternative possible solutions, but I personally believe that using sockets as a transport layer for data between applications is not only future proof, but scalable as well. Using sockets will eliminate the need for you to write copious amounts of OS specific code, which could proclude you from porting your application in the future to non-Windows operating systems.

I would suggest sockets.