WCF - Large Data Transfer - Best Practices
Transferring large volume of data over the wire is indeed an architectural challenge for any application. The word “large” is relative and the range could be from MB's to GB's. There are several options for large data transfer viz. FTP (out-of-band), Streaming, Chunking, etc. Above image lists the viable options for Large Data Transfer with their pros and cons and possible usage scenario. Options mapped to scenarios: 1) Intranet scenario: Context: Assume the application is a line-of-business Windows based thick client. It is deployed within the organization intranet and interoperability is low priority. Further, assume that the application consumes some intranet services which handle medium to high payloads (several MB’s to few GB’s). For example, the application might consume an in-built WCF service for uploading large data to a central database. Last assumption is that the payload data is saved in the database as a single entity (as an image). Recommendation: FTP is not prefe