Question

We have a number of different old school client-server C# WinForm client-side apps that are essentially front-ends for the database. Then there is a C# server-side windows service that waits on the client apps to submit orders and then it processes them.

The way the server-side service finds out whether there is work to do is that it polls the database. Over the years the logic of polling for waiting orders has gotten a lot more complicated due to the myriad of business rules. So because of this, the polling stored proc itself uses quite a bit of SQL Server resources even if there is nothing to do. Add to this the requirement that the orders be processed the moment they are submitted and you got yourself a performance problem, as the database is being polled constantly.

The setup actually works fine right now, but the load is about to go through the roof and, it is obvious, that it won’t hold up.

What are some effective ways to communicate between a bunch of different client-side apps and a server-side windows service, that will be more future-proof than the current method?

The database server is SQL Server 2005. I can probably get the powers that be to pony up for latest SQL Server if it really comes to that, but I’d rather not fight that battle.

Answer 1

There are numerous options ways you can notify the clients.

• You can use a ready-made solution like NServiceBus, to publish information from the server to the clients or other servers. NServiceBus uses MSMQ to publish one message to multiple subscribers in a very easy and durable way.
• You can use MSMQ or another queuing product to publish messages from the server that will be delivered to the clients.
• You can host a WCF service on the Windows service and connect to it from each client using a Duplex channel. Each time there is a change the service will notify the appropriate clients or even all of them. This is more complex to code but also much more flexible. You could probably send enough information back to the clients that they wouldn’t need to poll the database at all.
• You can have the service broadcast a UDP packet to all clients to notify them there are changes they need to pull. You can probably add enough information in the packet to allow the clients to decide whether they need to pull data from the server or not. This is a very lightweight for the server and the network, but it assumes that all clients are in the same LAN.