Application Design

[mak]

Hi, I am in the process of designing a simple Windows client
application, that polls an asp.net web page using HTTP GET on an IIS 6.0
web server for a small piece of information (about 30 characters) approx
every 15 minutes.

I would appreciate any advice you can offer in terms of the most
efficient way of polling the web server for this data. Currently the
Windows client uses HTTP GET to collect the output of the web page, but
I am wondering if a better design would be to use a SOAP web service.
However SOAP appears to be fairly verbose and the most important aspect
of the design is to keep bandwidth utilisation to a minimum as there
could be a lot of clients polling at the same time.

I would appreciate any advice you can give.

Many thanks.

[Kevin Spencer]

It all depends on how you expect your system to evolve. The chief advantages
to SOAP are that it uses international standards that are not
platform-specific, it provides a means of accessing object instances via
HTTP, and that it is easily extended. However, if you don't expect the HTTP
aspect of this application to evolve much, your solution is certainly simple
and elegant.

--
HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP

DSI PrintManager, Miradyne Component Libraries:
http://www.miradyne.net

"mak" <[e-mail] in message
news:46***********************@news.zen.co.uk...

Hi, I am in the process of designing a simple Windows client application,
that polls an asp.net web page using HTTP GET on an IIS 6.0 web server for
a small piece of information (about 30 characters) approx every 15
minutes.

I would appreciate any advice you can offer in terms of the most efficient
way of polling the web server for this data. Currently the Windows client
uses HTTP GET to collect the output of the web page, but I am wondering if
a better design would be to use a SOAP web service. However SOAP appears
to be fairly verbose and the most important aspect of the design is to
keep bandwidth utilisation to a minimum as there could be a lot of clients
polling at the same time.

I would appreciate any advice you can give.

Many thanks.

[mak]

Thank you for your reply. There is very little requirement to extend
this application at the moment so will take your advice and stick to the
current solution. Thanks.

Kevin Spencer wrote:

It all depends on how you expect your system to evolve. The chief advantages
to SOAP are that it uses international standards that are not
platform-specific, it provides a means of accessing object instances via
HTTP, and that it is easily extended. However, if you don't expect the HTTP
aspect of this application to evolve much, your solution is certainly simple
and elegant.