How to check if a Server and Client are in the same concurrency model?

Question

The concurrency model can be either apartment-threaded or multi-threaded

Question:

• How to ensure that both the Client and Server are operating from within the same concurrency model?

Answer 1

If you need to know, there's something wrong with your design: the client and server need too much information about one another's internals. Part of the point of client-server is to decouple the two.

That said, then, there is a registry value ThreadingModel.There's an MSDN article on these things as well.

Answer 2

Sometimes you need to know. Two quick examples:

• Performance hit of proxy/stub pairs is a problem
• You need to pass around "unmarshallable" data or objects

So, the answer -- if you do need to know:

The server and the client must be designed and implemented to support the same or compatible models. Either one of these scenarios will do:

• Both should be MTA, or
• Both should be STA, or
• The server should be "Both" (supports either)
• The Server should be "free-threaded" (but that doesn't buy you anything extra compared to Both, in this scenario)