R – Migrating to WCF from ASP.Net 2.0 web services

asp.netwcfweb services

I currently have a suite of .Net web services that are developed in ASP.Net 2.0. They don't utilize any WS-E extensions, rather they implement security at the application level. They are fairly straightforward data retrieval/update features. I am interested in re-factoring these web services gradually over time into WCF services, mostly to future-proof them against the deprecation of old framework versions.
My main concern is the amount of re-coding that will need to be done in the client applications to re-connect with these services.

Has anyone gone down this road already?
Was it worth it?
Can you recommend any reading materials that I can use to continue my research in this area?

Best Answer

Your concerns are valid. I've been taking the approach of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' and leaving existing 'legacy' web services alone until they need work. For new development we have been adopting WCF the solution to communication problems big and small. The most tangible benefit is the ease of integration if you have a nice clean object model. The most tangible negative is that (relatively speaking) there are much more configuration headaches, especially when you start trying to secure things.

I find it interesting you mentioned the WS-* spec as that is where we had the most problems integrating WCF with a Java system. The security features are just plain missing right now, and we ended up using Microsoft.Web.Services3 (WSE3) for that one piece of the .NET side of things.

I would highly recommend reading through these articles even if you don't do security with WCF right now, you probably will have to at some point.

For MVC v5.1 use Html.EnumDropDownListFor

@Html.EnumDropDownListFor(
    x => x.YourEnumField,
    "Select My Type", 
    new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC v5 use EnumHelper

@Html.DropDownList("MyType", 
   EnumHelper.GetSelectList(typeof(MyType)) , 
   "Select My Type", 
   new { @class = "form-control" })

For MVC 5 and lower

I rolled Rune's answer into an extension method:

namespace MyApp.Common
{
    public static class MyExtensions{
        public static SelectList ToSelectList<TEnum>(this TEnum enumObj)
            where TEnum : struct, IComparable, IFormattable, IConvertible
        {
            var values = from TEnum e in Enum.GetValues(typeof(TEnum))
                select new { Id = e, Name = e.ToString() };
            return new SelectList(values, "Id", "Name", enumObj);
        }
    }
}

This allows you to write:

ViewData["taskStatus"] = task.Status.ToSelectList();

by using MyApp.Common

.net – ASP.NET Web Site or ASP.NET Web Application

Website:

The Web Site project is compiled on the fly. You end up with a lot more DLL files, which can be a pain. It also gives problems when you have pages or controls in one directory that need to reference pages and controls in another directory since the other directory may not be compiled into the code yet. Another problem can be in publishing.

If Visual Studio isn't told to re-use the same names constantly, it will come up with new names for the DLL files generated by pages all the time. That can lead to having several close copies of DLL files containing the same class name, which will generate plenty of errors. The Web Site project was introduced with Visual Studio 2005, but it has turned out not to be popular.

Web Application:

The Web Application Project was created as an add-in and now exists as part of SP 1 for Visual Studio 2005. The main differences are the Web Application Project was designed to work similarly to the Web projects that shipped with Visual Studio 2003. It will compile the application into a single DLL file at build time. To update the project, it must be recompiled and the DLL file published for changes to occur.

Another nice feature of the Web Application project is it's much easier to exclude files from the project view. In the Web Site project, each file that you exclude is renamed with an excluded keyword in the filename. In the Web Application Project, the project just keeps track of which files to include/exclude from the project view without renaming them, making things much tidier.

Reference

The article ASP.NET 2.0 - Web Site vs Web Application project also gives reasons on why to use one and not the other. Here is an excerpt of it:

You need to migrate large Visual Studio .NET 2003 applications to VS 2005? use the Web Application project.

You want to open and edit any directory as a Web project without creating a project file? use Web Site project.

You need to add pre-build and post-build steps during compilation? use Web Application project.

You need to build a Web application using multiple Web projects? use the Web Application project.

You want to generate one assembly for each page? use the Web Site project.

You prefer dynamic compilation and working on pages without building entire site on each page view? use Web Site project.

You prefer single-page code model to code-behind model? use Web Site project.

Web Application Projects versus Web Site Projects (MSDN) explains the differences between the web site and web application projects. Also, it discusses the configuration to be made in Visual Studio.