Notification messages

[arunc083]

Hello All,

I am designing a winforms application which talks to web services via VPN/LAN(.Net framework 2.0).
The application mostly deals with load/modify/insert data data in a SQL 2k5 DB.

Since I wanted the application to be simple to develop and be scalable, I found web services to be the way to go. But now, there's an additional complexity of broadcasting messages to all clients.

A client should be able to send messages to all the other clients currently logged in. Also, specific events like locking,etc should be notified(When a user starts editing a form, all the other clients should be notified of the event and should be prevented from editing the same form).

What will be the best way to implement such a functionality?

Sockets? Remoting? Any suggestions?

Thanks.
Arun

[Daxthecon]

A client should be able to send messages to all the other clients currently logged in. Also, specific events like locking,etc should be notified(When a user starts editing a form, all the other clients should be notified of the event and should be prevented from editing the same form).

I don't understand why you would want to announce all this to other users. Seems like it would take up a lot of bandwidth even over a lan if you have a notification that someone is doing something so small. I don't think I am understanding this correctly. What I did was when something happened I had it collect under a logic of sql queries. Then I would have those queries linked into a table where it would be veiwable to a web page. When something met a certain amount of standards I had set the program followed protocol and if it was important enough it got sent in an email to those who where effected. I geuss thats what you are asking. I'm not sure. Some explanation would be nice.

[arunc083]

I don't understand why you would want to announce all this to other users. Seems like it would take up a lot of bandwidth even over a lan if you have a notification that someone is doing something so small. I don't think I am understanding this correctly. What I did was when something happened I had it collect under a logic of sql queries. Then I would have those queries linked into a table where it would be veiwable to a web page. When something met a certain amount of standards I had set the program followed protocol and if it was important enough it got sent in an email to those who where effected. I geuss thats what you are asking. I'm not sure. Some explanation would be nice.

Hi,

The purpose of the GUI is to modify domain data in the back end. Say, for example, a user is modifying Product information in the DB. I request for product information and the client opens up a datagridview with product data. Now, I start editing the grid. When I do this, I would like to lock this functionality out to all the other users saying "User A has locked Product maintenance". I dont want to do this when the user submits the form because, the user might spend some time making his changes only to find that they are useless because some one else is already editing the info. If I queue the requests, I need to synchronise the two versions from the 2 users(which I dont want to do).

Hence, I would like a method by which all the clients "Listen" for any notification like this and lock out any bits required. And the server, will listen for the client messages and notify the others.

The other bit of functionality is simple messaging. An administrator might want to notify all the clients logged in that "The system will go down for maintenance in x minutes..please save your changes".

I currently have an architecture with winforms and web services. I would like to extend this to incorporate these features and I am looking for ways to implement this.

Thanks
Arun