Question

I’m developing a webservice that will, when called, notify another program via a tcp connection. My problem is where to store the open tcp connection. The way I understand web services, they start and end with each HTTP Request, with no room for application wide variables, like the open tcp connection.

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Specifically, in what part of the asmx file, or outside of it, should I place the code for listening for incoming tcp traffic?

Answer 1

You can place the tcp connection as a static member of the service class and make a static constructor that handles the instantiation.

This will create the tcp connection before the first access of the web service is handled and then persist the connection as long as the hosting process is running. The only drawback with that approach is that the tcp connection is process wide. If you host two instances of the web service within the same process (quite unlikely) they will share the same tcp connection.