Start with remoting or with WCF

Question

Hi.

I'm just starting with distributed application development. I need to create (all by myself) an enterprise application for document management. That application will run on an intranet (within the firewall, no internet access is required now, BUT is probably that will be later).

The application needs to manage images that will be stored within MySQL Server (as blobs) and those images will be then recovered by the app and eventually one or more of them will be converted to PDF.

Performance is the most important non-functional requirement.

I have a couple of doubts.

1. What do you suggest to use, .NET Remoting or WCF over TCP-IP (I think second one is the best for the moment I need to expose the business logic over internet, changing the protocol).

2. Where do you suggest to make the transformation of the images to pdf files, I'm using iText. (I have thought to have the business logic stored within the IIS and exposed via WCF, and that business logic to be responsible of getting the images and transforming them to PDF, that because the IIS and the MySQL Server are the same physical machine). I ask about where to do the transformation because the app must be accessible from multiple devices, and for example, for mobile devices, the pdf maybe is not necessary.

Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

1. WCF, only consider remoting if WCF presents some issue such as performance in your use case. You have many many more scaling and customisation options available under WCF.

2. Depends. If sending the images over the net presents an issue then it may have to be done locally. However as in (1) your existing suggestion seems ok.

See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/622190/net-remoting-vs-wcf for a similar question.

Answer 2

1. Definitely remoting if this is an option

2. Transformation - same box that the service is; since the service is going to funnel the images anyway - this is the best place. I would not put it on DB server, to better distribute the load and to separate non-db load from db specific load.

In addition, look into .Net 4.0 RIA services. They allow you best combo of .Net Remoting and WCF