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Asynchronous service operations in WCF

Posted by Vinit Kumar in Articles | WCF with VB.NET on September 30, 2011

Tags: Asynchronous operations, vb.net, vb.net article, vb.net tutorials, WCF services

This article is all about how to perform service operations asynchronously in WCF applications.

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Reader Level: Beginner

Introduction:

In Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) applications, a service operation can be implemented asynchronously or synchronously. For example, asynchronous service operations can be calling synchronously, and synchronous service operations can be called asynchronously.

Asynchronous operations allow a client to send a request to the server and the server callback to the client when the operation is complete.In this way, the client can free himself to do other things and gets around any message timeout issues.

In WCF applications, asynchronous requests in two ways:

Event Based Model: Event based asynchronous operations. This occurs on the client-side only.
IAsyncResult Model:Asynchronous operations using System.IAsyncResult based object. This can occur on both the client-side or server-side.

Need of asynchronous service operations:

Implementing asynchronous services is required when server side having workload that means server side performs heavy operations which might block the call for a long duration, such as I/O work, approaching databases etc.In all other cases, implement the service synchronously (which will cause the operation to block during the execution of the operation).

An important thing that need to know that there is no dependency between the way the client is implemented and the way the server is. I mean to say, the client can implement the contract synchronously while it is implemented asynchronously on the server side and vice versa.

Asynchronous operations in WCF Series:

Event Based Model
IAsyncResult Model (client-side)
IAsyncResult Model (server-side)
Canceling Operations
Handling Exceptions

Implementing the Service operation asychronously:

In your service contract, declare an asynchronous method pair according to the .NET asynchronous design guidelines. The Begin method takes a parameter, a callback object, and a state object, and returns a System.IAsyncResult and a matching End method that takes a System.IAsyncResult and returns the return value. For more information about asynchronous calls.
Mark the Begin method of the asynchronous method pair with the System.ServiceModel.OperationContractAttribute attribute and set the System.ServiceModel.OperationContractAttribute attribute.AsycnPattern property to true. For example, the following code performs steps 1 and 2.

Step 1: Open Visual Studio and go to the File menu.

Select WCF Service Application in Visual Basic.
The IService.vb will be open.

Code:

' NOTE: You can use the "Rename" command on the "Refactor" menu to change the interface name "IService1" in both code and config file together.
<ServiceContract()> _
Public Interface IService1

    <OperationContract()> _
    Function samplemethod(msgAs String)As String

    <OperationContract(AsyncPattern:=True)> _
    Function Beginsamplemethod(msgAs String, cb As AsyncCallback, state As Object) As IAsyncResult

    Function Endsamplemethod(rAs IAsyncResult)As String

    ' TODO: Add your service operations here

End Interface

Step 2: Open 'Service.svc.vb' and write the code:

Code:

' NOTE: You can use the "Rename" command on the "Refactor" menu to change the class name "Service1" in code, svc and config file together.
Public Class Service1
    Implements IService1
    Public Function samplemethod(msg As String) As String
        Console.WriteLine("Called synchronous sample method with ""{0}""", msg)
        Return "The sychronous service greets you: " & msg
    End Function

    ' This asynchronously implemented operation is never called because
    ' there is a synchronous version of the same method.
    Public Function Beginsamplemethod(msgAs String, callback As AsyncCallback, StateAs Object) As IAsyncResult
        Console.WriteLine("BeginSampleMethod called with: " & msg)
        Return New CompletedAsyncResult(Of String)(msg)
    End Function

    Public Function Endsamplemethod(r As IAsyncResult)As String
        Dim result As CompletedAsyncResult(Of String) = TryCast(r, CompletedAsyncResult(Of String))
        Console.WriteLine("EndSampleMethod called with: " + result.Data)
        Return result.Data
    End Function

End Class

Step 3: Add a class by Right clicking on the project in solution explorer.

Give the name of the class 'CompletedAsyncResult'.

Public Class CompletedAsyncResult(Of T)
    Implements IAsyncResult
    Private m_data As T

    Public Sub New(data As T)
        Me.m_data = data
    End Sub

    Public ReadOnly Property Data()As T
        Get
            Return m_data
        End Get
    End Property

#Region "IAsyncResult Members"
    Public ReadOnly Property AsyncState() As Object
        Get
            Return DirectCast(m_data,Object)
        End Get
    End Property

    Public ReadOnly Property AsyncWaitHandle()As WaitHandle
        Get
            Throw New Exception("The method or operation is not implemented.")
        End Get
    End Property

    Public ReadOnly Property CompletedSynchronously() As Boolean
        Get
            Return True
        End Get
    End Property