Class structure / VS.net question

[Rob Andrew]

Hi All,

I'm new to VS.net, coming from Delphi, and there is something that I'm
trying to clarify in my head about VS.net.

Suppose you had a class Employee (Name, Age, Title, etc).

Lets further assume that you are creating a web service, with a .net
windows application as a client to that web service. Given that you
wish to share the structure of the Employee class between client and
web service (which occurs with the auto generation of a proxy class),
all is fine.

Is there a way of structuring your code so that you can make use of
only one copy of the Employee class? Im not trying to get the method
itself over the web service, but rather allowing my already defined
class to be used in two places (the web service and the client
application).

For instance, can you call upon a method (say calculateSalary [which
perhaps adds 2 numbers together]) without going to the webservice and
hence back to the original class itself for the method (which is not
transferred over the web service)? So we would compile the class into
two separate assemblies?

Thanks, Rob

[recoil@community.nospam]

Re: Class structure / VS.net question

The Proxy only replicates properties and Web Service methods.
Definition of what this means
[WebMethod]
public MyDatatype[] AMethod(int32 parameter)
{
return an array of MyDataType[]
}
class MyDataType
{ public property MyName
override ToString() { return MyName; }
}


If the web service is used in a reference and you add the object to a
listbox instead of seeing the value of MyName it will show
{MNameSpace.MyD ataType}.

Sharing the same logic code such as the above example between a web
service and a client is extremely painful imho. Often times I have
logic that needs to be performed by the client but does not need to be
performed by the web service. When this happens i create a MyDataTypeEx
which has a constructor overload that accepts a MyDataType (this is
useful for arrays since you cannot convert MyDataType[] to
MyDataTypeEx. This approach may actually be usable in a scenario where
one needs logic to be usable by both sides. You could have your
Extended class which has all the shared logic in a separate satellite
assembly. You never publicly expose these methods via the web service.
The only real major issue I see here is that you have the overhead of
going back and forth between Object and ExtendedObject .

I think there is a reason why web services are still not a common sight
and this is one of the many reasons why. Currently web services are a
semi-decent means to communicate and from my experience you really
should not be attempting to communicate anything overly complex,
otherwise the limitations start weighing in heavily.