Readonly access to session in a web service call?

Question

We have a .net asmx web service that gets called from javascript (using ASP.Net AJAX), and requires access to Session.

[WebMethod(true)]
public string DoSomethingOnTheServer() { }

We're running into the problem of session being locked on a read/write request. Is there any way to mark a web service method as requiring read-only access to Session?

Thanks!

Answer 1

According to the MSDN documentation of the WebMethod Attribute there are several possible properties, so I'm not sure what the 'true' value in your WebMethod Attribute going to do.

Have you tried:

[WebMethod(EnableSession=true)]

According to this document that should give you full access to the session.

Answer 2

This http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480509.aspx page seems to suggest that the answer is "no" - you cannot mark a WebSerivce as having EnableSessionState=ReadOnly.

If you are making simultaneous Web service calls from the same process, the requests will be serialized at the server so that only one will execute at any one time. Unlike .ASPX pages that have support for read-only access to the HttpSessionState object, which allows for simultaneous processing of multiple requests, there is no such capability with ASP.NET Web services. All Web method calls with sessions enabled have read/write access and will be serialized within each session.

Warning: That article is old (2002).