.NET Remoting in Delphi and C# Alain “Lino” Tadros President & CEO Falafel Software Inc. ComponentScience Inc. BORCON 2004

Agenda.NET Distributed Applications Using Remoting  Providing objects  Configuring  Cross platform  Performance Extensibility

.NET Remoting And SOAP SoapFormatter and HttpChannel do the hard work Complete SOAP 1.1 implementation  Primitives (int, float, string, etc)  Single and multi dimensional arrays of Simple types and Objects.  Objects and References to Objects (also covers Structs / Value types), Trees of Objects, Graphs of Objects  Enumerations, SOAP Faults

.NET Distributed Applications ASP.NET Web Services XML Schema compliance SOAP 1.2 compliance Great tool support Better documentation.NET Remoting Full object fidelity Flexibility in formatting Flexibility in transport Singletons Custom hosting Client-activated

.NET Remoting Terminology Channel: protocol used to carry a message (HTTP, TCP) Formatter: strategy used to create a message (SOAP, binary) Marshalling: moving an object from one AppDomain to another (Marshal by Reference, Marshal by Value)

Building Remoteable Objects Marshal by Reference Inherit from MarshalByRefObject (or a child) Marshal by Value Implement ISerializable Mark class with SerializableAttribute

Hosting objects Internet Information Services (IIS) Custom Hosts  Manually Configuring  Text-based Configuration Windows 2003 Server COM+ Services

Host Configuration files <wellknown mode="SingleCall" type="Hello.HelloService, Hello" objectUri="HelloService.soap“/> In web.Config or host config file Wellknown objects can be SingleCall or Singleton Type must be typename, assembly ObjectUri must end with.soap or.rem

Hosting in XP COM+ Services Turn a COM+ Application of COM+ Components into Web Services Just click in the COM+ Admin Tool  Application Activation Tab Configures the COM components for.NET Remoting  Automatically Creates IIS Virtual Directory  Generates web.config  Generates metadata Ships in Windows XP / Windows Server 2003 Uses.NET Remoting Framework  HTTP, SOAP and WSDL

Using Activator Use Activator.GetObject to get instance Doesn’t use new operator Type type = typeof(HelloService); String url = " HelloService helloService = (HelloService) Activator.GetObject(type, url);

Accessing objects Server activated objects  Single Call  Singleton Client activated objects Accessing  Via code  With configuration files  Windows XP moniker

SoapSuds Clients need metadata at compile time What about metadata for remote object? Soapsuds utility ships with.NET SDK Create Assemblies, Schema, or C# code from WSDL soapsuds -url: -oa:Hello.dll

Accessing through code No Config File necessary Requires recompile to change uri After registering type, just use new Type type = typeof(HelloService); String url = “ ChannelServices.RegisterChannel( new TcpChannel() ); RemotingConfiguration.RegisterWellKnownClientType( type, url ); HelloService helloService = new HelloService();

Using Client Config Files Easy and Flexible Configuration Can be changed without recompile Select channel and formatter After loading config file, just use new … RemotingConfiguration.Configure(configFilename); HelloService helloService = new HelloService(); <wellknown type="Hello.HelloService, Hello" url=" />

Accessing from XP COM COM SOAP Moniker Make SOAP calls from COM to Web Services GetObject(“soap:wsdl=  Downloads WSDL  Uses Remoting Metadata Proxy Generation engine to turn WSDL into TLB – saved to disk  Returns a Remoting Proxy to COM caller Calls on Proxy sent over HTTP SOAP using Remoting

Object Lifetime Leased based lifetime  Singletons  Client-Activated Sponsors

Interoperability SOAP Builders Microsoft, IBM, Borland, ActiveState, HP, Glue, SOAP::Lite (perl), PockeSOAP, many, many others

Performance Intra-Remoting  Comparing formatters, channels Versus ASP.NET Web Services Versus DCOM Your mileage will vary

.NET Remoting Architecture X = Add(5, 2) Int Add(int x, int y) Formatter SOAP BinaryBinary ProxyDispatcher Channel HTTPTCPYourChannel

Extensibility Custom Formatters Replace SOAP, Binary formatters Custom Channels Replace HTTP, TCP channel Channel Sinks Extend existing channels Message Sinks Extend existing formatters

Channel Sink Allow you to extend or modify communication Plugs into existing communication channel Tracing, encryption, security, …

Summary Use.NET Remoting when: You need to get a message between AppDomains You need flexibility in message formatting or transport Resources:

Questions?