C# Remoting / WCF Client Server app what comms technology to use?

Question

Hi all,

I am after so advice really. I have been thinking about a client server project for a while and am going to be using .NET. Originally is was just going to use 2.0 but recently got VS2008 and thought I should really explore 3.5 as well.

The application will have one server and many clients connected. Both the client and the server will need to talk to each other, (i.e. two way comms). This will be running across the internet.

I was going to just use remoting for this but is there anything or any reason I should use a different approach with 3.5?

I realize I may have some problems with firewalls when ports could be blocked at the client when I use remoting.

Really I am looking for suggestions to be the best way to handle communications between a client and server that will work across the net using .NET (would like the client to be able to be running other languages as well really but that is not vital I guess). Both the client and the server must be able to call each others methods.

Thanks,

and merry Christmas.

Jon

Answer 1

As far as i'm aware WCF is supposed to replace .NET Remoting so i'd go for that.

Answer 2

I'm just starting out in WCF and have asked a few questions around this topic here on SO. Some things I've learned over the past week or so:

1. This article is excellent: MS Pub-Sub with WCF
2. WCF is the way to go. It's dynamic configuration and single programming model should make it your preferred choice over traditional web services or remoting.
3. Through configuration your WCF service can be exposed via a simple HTTP binding allowing it to consumed by traditional web services.