Question

I’ve just started learning WCF.

It seems that every single use of the (remote) classes is translated into a request to the server (even just setting values, before sending them as a parameter to the service).

Doesn’t this cause too many unnecessary requests?

What can I do avoid this wasted time & bandwidth? I’m just trying to set some values. The Set section of these properties, has nothing but setting the values of the corresponding fields.

For example,

interface IService 
{
   int GetResult(MyComplexType1 input);
}

To use this service, I must firstly initialize a MyComplexType1 instance, which makes requests to the server every time I’m setting any value of MyComplexType1.

Answer 1

Invoking a web service is usually an expensive call in your code, so your design needs to consider that. For example, the following service wouldn’t be very effective:

public interface ICalculatorService
{
  void SetOperandOne(int value);
  void SetOperandTwo(int value);
  void SetMode(CalculationMode mode);
  int GetResult();
}

Whereas the following interface reduces the calls required to one:

public interface ICalculatorService
{
  int GetResult(int operandOne, int operandTwo, CalculationMode mode);
}