Question

I’m currently designing a live analytic site using Asp.Net + C#, I was wondering what is the best method to transmit the data from the server to the client, here is what I’ve thought of so far;

1. Using Asp.Net AJAX UpdatePanel, and regularly update it with a timer
   using JavaScript.

2. Create a server application (In C#, Java, Node.Js or Ruby) and use
   Socket IO to retrieve a constant stream of data from it.

3. Create a JSON web service which returns large amounts of data, I
   could use JQuery/AJAX to request it and process it in real-time on
   the page.

Do any of these seem a good idea, or are their any other options?

Answer 1

I would never use the update panel, it would be too heavy for what your doing. Regular ajax calls would work just fine and write up a webApi service. Websockets would work well too, but is a little more complex. Depending on your time, you might want to check out SignalR which is a websocket client solution that can fall back to polling if the browser doesn’t support websockets.