"Logging in" to a WCF service

[nathan.alden@gmail.com]

I have a Windows application that must "log in" to a remote service.
Once logged in, for all subsequent service calls the Windows
application should somehow pass a "session context" in each message to
the service, which will then be compared to session information stored
in SQL Server. However, for each service call a new client proxy is
created, i.e. I'm not reusing the same proxy over and over.
Essentially, I need to emulate what traditional ASP.NET sessions do.

I've done pretty much all the research I can looking into WCF
federation (RSTRSTR) but haven't come up with anything understandable.
I also know that WCF's concept of a session is not inherently
sufficient for what I'd like to do. I was curious what best practices
there were or whether anyone else has attempted something like this.

Thanks.

[Jeremy Shovan]

Re: "Loggin g in" to a WCF service

I have done something similar to this a while back with WCF. I ended up
using an encrypted token that held a session id and the time that the token
was created (used for expiration). We had a "log in server" that held
authentication information, this server would create our token and pass it
onto the server that is hosting the WCF service. If I recall correctly I
used an HttpModule to grab the encrypted token off of the request and
validated it at that time.. if it wasn't valid I simply closed the response
stream.

You could probably use something similar to this only hold an id in your
encrypted token that identifies session information that you have stored in
SQL Server. Just include the token on each of your calls through your
various proxies.

Jeremy Shovan



<nathan.alden@g mail.comwrote in message
news:61287791-c803-4954-8ca6-8bd86732951d@56 g2000hsm.google groups.com...

I have a Windows application that must "log in" to a remote service.
Once logged in, for all subsequent service calls the Windows
application should somehow pass a "session context" in each message to
the service, which will then be compared to session information stored
in SQL Server. However, for each service call a new client proxy is
created, i.e. I'm not reusing the same proxy over and over.
Essentially, I need to emulate what traditional ASP.NET sessions do.
>
I've done pretty much all the research I can looking into WCF
federation (RSTRSTR) but haven't come up with anything understandable.
I also know that WCF's concept of a session is not inherently
sufficient for what I'd like to do. I was curious what best practices
there were or whether anyone else has attempted something like this.
>
Thanks.