Swapping ASP.NET DataProvider from RDBMS to WCF

Question

I have a client that is pushing for all data access to go over SOAP web services. No, I don't know why; I guess they like to keep their processors warm with all the XML building and parsing. Anyway... I have to move an existing web app programmed using a DataProvider on Oracle to WCF. I haven't written the web service yet. Are their any tools/frameworks/ideas to help create a DataProvider that uses a WCF proxy (or any SOAP client) for data access? Is this even possible?

Answer 1

Hopefully the ASP.NET site has some kind of "Data Access Layer", this will make your job much easier as it will have calls that are easy to proxy, e.g. bool SaveOrder( Order order ), Customer GetCustomerWithOrders( int customerID ) etc.

If instead the ASP.NET is making direct calls to the DataProvider (as I suspect might be the case) then you've got a big job on your hands, since it's a chatty process where you open a connection, do a few things that might require multiple calls to the database, then close it... whereas WCF works best as stateless calls. You can create sessions and try to proxy a DataProvider but I think that would actually make the app more complex and less stable.

I strongly recommend going back to the client and asking "Why do you want to convert to using SOAP and WCF, and what do you hope to gain?".