Remoting using SOAP without web server?

jacob · February 23rd, 2005, 08:34 PM

Is it possible? When developing web services based on SOAP one needs to go through a web server. I am not sure about .NET remoting? The examples I have seen give an URL like http://localhost:8000/SomeServer/SomeRemotingClass etc. to specifiy where the objects are.

The thing is that I am about to design a distributed system in which there is a central unit which is going to be a web service, and this web service is going to initiate jobs on different machines. However, these machines have different platforms, and I cannot expect web servers to be running on these machines.

I would like to be able to make simple servers for these machines running both Linux and Windows which can communicate with some client enabled by the web service. E.g. implemented in Perl for Linux and .NET for Windows, og Java for both.

The web service is going to run on a .NET enabled machine, so I thought that I would develop the client part (the part that communicates with the servers) using .NET remoting, but in order to get interoperability I guess I need SOAP? and if I cannot make .NET remoting with SOAP work without a web server this solution is on good.

Thanks, Jacob.

jacob · February 24th, 2005, 08:29 AM

Alright... I solved the problem.

The think is that you actually is able to do your own small web server by setting up a HttpServerChannel, and when you are requesting the object it is done through this host; i.e. through this channel. Is this correct? At least it works that way. The small web host looks like this...

Code:

namespace MyRemotingServerHost
{
    class MyRemotingHost
    {
        [STAThread]
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            HttpServerChannel httpChannel = new HttpServerChannel(8100);
            ChannelServices.RegisterChannel(httpChannel);

            RemotingConfiguration.ApplicationName = "MyRemotingSOAPServer";
            RemotingConfiguration.RegisterActivatedServiceType(typeof(MyRemotingSOAPServer));

            Console.WriteLine("Press any key to continue...");
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}

This way one can use .NET remoting without having a big web server running, but I guess it doesn't solve my interoperability problems.

Jacob.

Ankur_Verma · February 26th, 2005, 04:44 AM

Remoting is .Net specific.

If you want ur application to run across different platforms, web service and web service clients is the way to go.
But having explored remoting as much as you have, different format sink providers, callcontexts, events would make good leisure time reading for you.

Let us know if you land on a solution for your interoperability problem.

jacob · February 26th, 2005, 11:16 AM

Thanks for the reply.

The thing is that the web services require web servers, and I cannot assume that the series of servers that I should access as servers have got a web server, so the web service approach is not an option... unfortunately.

The setup that I would like is something like this... clients (different platforms) requsting jobs at some web service (windows, .NET) which will initiate the jobs on one of a series of servers (different platforms).

The first part should be possible, i.e. clients requesting at some web service, however the last part is a bit more tricky. I think I am doing a solution where I use .NET remoting and SOAP for now, but making an interface so that the communication part can be replaced later by another implementation of the communication layer.

I have made the .NET remoting work with both Microsoft .NET and Mono, so if I am only targeting Windows and Linux on the server-side this would be somewhat acceptable eventhough there are other dependencies such as Mono.

Thanks, Jacob.