WCF and Stored Procedure Options - asp.net

I'm making my first WCF Service and I am unsure which route I should take with stored procedures and Linq to Sql. I understand that I can drag and drop stored procs to my DBML file and call them that way, or call them directly, not using the dbml. Is there a reason why i should choose one over the other? I guess I'm a little confused... Any input is greatly appreciated!

Well, do you already have a Linq-to-SQL data model, which you use in your WCF service? If so, I would probably put my stored procedures into that data model.
If you don't already have and use a Linq-to-SQL data model, I don't really see much use and sense in creating one just to be able to call a stored procedure.
If you don't already have a Linq-to-SQL data model, I'd probably just use the straight ADO.NET code to call that stored procedure, send in any parameters coming from the WCF service method, and passing back any data you need to send back. In that case, you'd use a SqlConnection, a SqlCommand (CommandType set to StoredProcedure), a bunch of SqlParameters, and then call the command.ExecuteNonQuery() or command.ExecuteReader() methods (depending on what your stored proc is doing).

If you come across a situation in which you may need to manipulate the arguments of the stored procedure dynamically, you may want to create a class that calls the stored procedure via WCF Service. Check how is done in this post.
Executing SPs from WCF Service

Related

How to execute oracle procedure in phalcon

I have to call an oracle procedure in phalcon framework. Does anyone know how to call it in phalcon model.
I have tried but it doesn't work.
Please help!
There are two ways to perform this task and none of them are Phalcon related.
To call a stored procedure you will need to use PDO prepared statements. Since Phalcon implements PDO you will be able to do this using the db service and not the models. Information on how to do this is here:
http://php.net/manual/en/pdo.prepared-statements.php
This also depends on whether you have installed the oci PDO related extension.
The second way is to use the oracle supplied methods such as:
oci_connect
oci_parse (sql statement here)
oci_bind_by_name(bind each parameter to a php variable)
oci_execute
oci_free_statement
You could potentially create models of your own that will encapsulate the above and call the relevant stored procedure. Upon receiving the data back you can instantiate a resultset object and populate it with the returned data.
This will offer the normal resultset back to your application but you won't be able to do much with it since you rely on stored procedures and not a straight up model->table relationship.
There are long discussions and sometimes heated ones on why one should or should not use stored procedures and even more why one should or should not use Oracle. One thing is clear, stored procedures with all their benefits do offer a level of complexity and restrictions to the developers. In Oracle's case and with the notorious cursors, those restrictions are a bit more acute.
One last thing to note is that if you create your own models (nothing to do with Phalcon) you can have the stored procedure variables as properties in each model. That way you will be able to set them, make your call to the stored procedure (see the oci_* functions above) with a say call() function in that model, and then update the object's properties again with the returned variables from the stored procedure. This model will be able to serve you with the basic CRUD operations by calling relevant stored procedures that will allow this CRUD but expose methods that are a bit friendlier to you say insert(), get(), delete() etc.

How to invoke Web service after inserting a raw in a table

I have a program in which it insert a raw in a table after certain operations. I wan to call a web service in code behind to do some special tasks by the using of info that there is in the inserted row.
How I can do that?
Is it good idea to invoke this web service from a stored procedure or not? What are the other options?
More Details: Actually, I have an operation in my web application that take a long time to be completed and it is seriously time consuming operation. I don't want client wait until this process finish. That is why I decide write a web service to do this process in the background.
Therefore, I think it may be a good idea that when client request receive I insert his request in a table and call a web service to handle it. Moreover, I do not want to wait until web service return the result, so I will aware client from its result through the report. I do not know what is the best solution to handle it.
I usually keep myself far away from table triggers(it sounds like you're about to use an on insert trigger for a table).
I don't know your specific situation but you could either :
Call the webservice before or after you call the stored procedure, this way the data layer(stored proc) only handles data and nothing more. You're logical layer will handle the logic of calling an extra webservice.
Write a service that will periodicly read a table and notify the webservice of the latest modifications. More messy but it resembles more the effect you're trying to achieve.
There are probably more solutions but i'd need more information on what it exactly is you're doing. Right now it's kinda vague :)
It is never a good idea to call webservice from Stored procs or other DB objects. You can call it from your code, just after you execute the insert and commit it.
The problem it sounds like is that you cannot guarantee that the web service will be called unless you call it before committing the transaction. However, it sounds like the web service needs to be called after commit. In this case, it sounds like you should use a message queue. You could either build one in your database or you could use one off the shelf (http://aws.amazon.com/sqs/ or http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/home/features/messaging/).
The steps would be:
Insert message into queue (after this is success you can return the call, depending on what your contract with the caller is)
Read message
Insert into table
Call web service
Delete message
The downside is that you will need to make the operations (inserting into the table and calling the web service) idempotent.

Entity Framework 5 with custom Models and OData - Web API

I'm evaluating some technologies for a new Web Application. Which should use EF5 and Knockout JS with Web API. I wanted to take advantage of the OData feature, when returning IQueryable, but am currently running into the problem, how to convert my EF Models to my Business Models.
As far as I've read, if I want to have a more complex DB (Computed Columns, Stored Procedures, ...) I should use DB First approach. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
Because I need to use DB-First approach and want my models to be Independent of the DB, I need to create them additionally to the EF-Models. And when I return from the DataLayer my Business Model as IQueryable I loose the possibility to execute additional queries directly on the DB but instead they are executed on the ASP.Net server directly.
Of course I don't plan to run complex queries over OData and would anyway implement those as additional actions, but it might be useful on the slower clients (smartphones, ...) to limit the returned data and perform additional filters directly on the server.
Is there any way out of this dilemma, to be still able to use OData?
Regards
Peter
You can try using Code First and EF migrations to create/upgrade database. With migrations you can create custom migrations that can be just SQL scripts to achieve what can't be done automatically with Code First itself. Database First approach is fine as well.
Ask yourself if you really want to/need to support multiple backends. It is possible with EF but hard to maintain. In this case I assume your conceptual model (csdl) would be the same for all databases but you would have multiple store specific models (ssdl files). Since your model would be the same for all databases you would have the same C# types regardless of the database you are using.
When supporting multiple databases you won't be able to run SQL queries against the database (or to be more specific you will get exceptions if you run SQL query specific to one database against a different database) but ideally you should not need it. In the worst you could enclose the logic you would like to code in SQL in a stored procedure that would exist in all databases. Again, I don't know when this would be needed (the only thing that comes to mind is performance) but since you are planning using OData you wouldn't be able to run these queries anyways unless you start using Service Operations.
Since your conceptual model would be the same regardless of the database you would have the same types regardless of the database. You could try using these for both DataLayer and Business Model (especially if you go with POCO). An alternative would be to use POCO/DTOs. (I have not tried OData support in Web API but with WCF Data Services the service itself would actually use EF types so you would not be even able to tell the service to use different set of types).
You actually don't lose the ability with DB first models to execute queries against the business model, as long as your transforms aren't too bad. For example, I have a OData service which has a PersistedCustomer (DB model) and a Customer (Business model). With EF5, I can write the LINQ which transforms the IQueryable to IQueryable, query against the IQueryable and EF can translate the criteria back against the original database.

Accessing data set over WCF without serializing the entire thing?

I'm very new at WCF (and .NET in general), so I apologize if this is common knowledge.
I'm designing a WCF solution (currently using Entity Framework to access the database). I want to grab a (possibly very large) set of data from the database, and return it to the client, but I don't want to serialize the entire set of data over the wire all at once, due to performance concerns.
I'd like to operation to return some sort of object to the client that represents the resulting data and I'd like to deal with that data on the client, being able to navigate through it backwards and forwards and retrieve the actual data over the wire as needed.
I don't want to write a lot client code to individually find out what rows meet my search criteria, then make separate calls to get each record if I can help it. I'm trying to keep the client as simple as possible.
Ideally, I'd like to write the client code similar to something like the below pseudocode:
Reference1.Service1Client MyService = new Reference1.Service1Client("Service1");
DelayedDataSet<MyRecordType> MyResultSet = MyService.GetAllCustomers();
MyResultSet.First();
while (!MyResultSet.Eof)
{
Console.Writeline(MyResultSet.CurrentRecord().CUSTFNAME + " " + MyResultSet.CurrentRecord().CUSTLNAME);
Console.Writeline("Press Enter to see the next customer");
Console.Readline();
MyResultSet.Next();
}
Of course, DelayedDataSet is something I just made up, and I'm hoping something like it exists in .NET.
The call to MyService.GetAllCustomers() would return this DelayedDataSet object, with would not actually contain the actual records. The actual data wouldn't come over the wire until CurrentRecord() is called. Next() and Previous() would simply update a cursor on the server side to point to the appropriate record. I don't want the client to have any direct visibility to the database or Entity Framework.
I'm guessing that the way I wrote the code probably won't work over WCF, and that the functions like CurrentRecord(), Next(), First(), etc. would have to be separate service contract operations. I guess I'm just looking for a way to do this without having to write all my own code to cache the results on the server, somehow persist the data sets server side, write all the retrieval and navigation code in my service library, etc. I'm hoping most of this is already done for me.
It seems like this would be a very commonly needed function. So, does something like this exist?
-Joe
No, that's not what WCF is designed to do.
In WCF, the very basic core architecture is that you have a client and a server, and nothing but (XML-)serialized data going between the two over the wire.
WCF is not a remote-procedure call method, or some sort of remote object mechanism - there is no connection between the client and the server except the serialized message that conforms to the service (and data) contracts defined between the two.
WCF is not designed to handle huge data volumes - it's designed to handle individual messages (GetCustomerByID(42) and such). Since WCF is from the ground up designed to be interoperable with other platforms (non - .NET, too - like Java, Ruby etc.) you should definitely not be using heavy-weight .NET specific types like DataSet anyway - use proper objects.
Also, since WCF ultimately serializes everything to XML and send it across a wire, all the data being passed must be expressible in XML schema - which excludes interfaces and/or generics.
From what I'm reading in your post, what you're looking for is more of a "in-proc" data access layer - not a service level. So if you want to keep going down this path, you should investigate the repository and unit-of-work patterns in conjunction with Entity Framework.
More info:
MSDN: What is Windows Communication Foundation?
WCF Essentials—A Developer's Primer
Picture of the very basic WCF architecture from that Primer - there's only a wire with a serialized message connecting client and server - nothing more; but serialization will always happen

tests for an application that only has webforms that read and insert and data using sql server stored procedures

Hello (i dont have any expirience on tests). There is a Web Applicaction that only has web forms, that print data read from stored procedures, and insert data using stored procedures as well. All the business logic is in the stored procedures. I have to say i dont like the way the application was done, but is mandatory to have as much tests as possible. Most of the methods return void (becouse they are for instance a button_clicked method that read from text boxes and call the stored procedure, the stored procedure does everything) So i cant do unit testing. Could you recommend me some tests that i can do and document, that fits to this web application please? thanks a lot.
If most of your business logic sits in stored procedures, it's best that you implement some tests for your procs.
Have a look at the TST Framework for testing your sql.
http://tst.codeplex.com/
As for the website, what you can do is probably ensure that you are calling the correct stored procedures on the invocation of some buttons.
e.g. you don't want to call the "ChangeName" stored procedure when the "Calculate Monthly Salary" button is clicked.

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