Home/ Questions/Q 417717
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-12T18:36:28+00:00

I’m building a WinForms application where I’ll need it to work locally (just like

  • 0

I’m building a WinForms application where I’ll need it to work “locally” (just like Microsoft Word, saving and opening files from the file system) and also in a multi-user environment (communicating with a server in the network, via TCP/IP).

In terms of architecture I’m thinking of these logical layers:

  • Presentation (windows forms)
  • Service
  • Data Access

My plan is to make the “Service” layer a WCF service. So when the application is working in “local” mode, I’d host the WCF service in the Presentation (executable) process. Presentation would be a service host AND a client at the same time. It would access the service layer using a WCF proxy, pointing to “localhost”.

When the application is in a network environment, I’d like to host the same WCF service in a “Windows/NT Service” process in some other machine, and Presentation would communicate with it using the same WCF proxy as in local mode.

That is, for Presentation I would have one API only.

In theory this looks good. However, I would like to know your opinion about this whole thing. Is it a bad practice to use WCF in this way, having server and client in the same process? Can you see an alternative/better way of doing this?

Another (maybe unrelated) question is: can I host and consume a WCF service in the same Windows Forms executable if I’m tagetting the .NET Framework Client Profile installation?

I appreciate your comments 🙂

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would say it’s not bad practice at all to host server and client in the same process – it’s called inter-process communication! 🙂

    For the local scenario, I’d use the NetNamedPipe binding – fast as hell, for “on-machine” communication only.

    For the LAN scenario, just switch to NetTcpBinding – very fast and efficient as well.

    Should work like a charm.

    According to this page on the .NET Framework Client Profile, pretty much all of WCF should be supported on the client profile:

    WCF features supported by the .Net
    Framework Client Profile

    The following Windows Communication
    Foundation features are supported by
    .NET Framework Client Profile:

    * All of WCF is supported except for Cardspace and web hosting.
* Remoting TCP/IP channels are supported.
* Asmx (Web Services) are not supported.

    Marc

    • 0