Question

I have the following architecture for a project I’m working on.

My question is how to begin implementing the TCP/IP responder part.
It’s function, in case the diagram is hard to read, is to wait for a connection from the Order Viewing client, and subsequently notify said client of incoming orders.

I was thinking a queue, but unfortunately I don’t know where something like this would fit in the VS2008 hierarchy of things.

If it’s part of the ASP.NET web page, should I use the application start event to start the TCP IP responder?

It’s not a web service, because those respond to http requests…

Answer 1

If I had to implement your “TCP responder” I’d probably implement it as a windows service and have both the ASP.NET app and the Winform client contact it (e.g. to avoid the problem of recycling of the ASP.NET etc.)

That said, I can think of gazillion easier ways to get the effect you want to achieve (getting the winform client to know about new orders) such as

• Using Queues as you mentioned. Windows comes with MSMQ (you need to enable it in add windows features). Using MSMQ from C# is fairly easy. You can also use WCF if you like
• exposing an http endpoint on the client and have the client notify the ASP.NET server where it is listening by calling one of its pages
• write the orders to the DB and poll it from the client/use System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDependency to know when there’s a change

Heck even writing the orders to a file on a shared folder with a FileSystemWatcher would work (though I’d probably wouldn’t recommend that)