Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Visual C#™ .NET and the .NET Framework, Exam Cram™ 2 (Exam 70-320) By Amit Kalani, Priti Kalani
Table of Contents
Chapter 5. Basic Web Services
Customizing the WebMethod Attribute
You can customize your Web service in a number of ways by adding properties to the WebMethod attribute. Table 5.1 shows the properties that you can use to customize the Web method's behavior.
Table 5.1. Properties of the WebMethod Attribute
Property
Meaning
BufferResponse
Indicates whether the response should be buffered. If set to true (the default), the entire response is buffered until the message is completely serialized and is then sent to the client. If set to false, the response is sent to the client as it is serialized.
CacheDuration
Specifies the number of seconds that ASP.NET should cache results on the server. The default is 0, which disables caching.
Description
Supplies a description for the Web method.
EnableSession
Indicates whether the session state should be enabled. The default is false.
MessageName
Specifies the name by which the method will be called in SOAP messages. The default is the method name.
TransactionOption
If set to TransactionOption.Required or TransactionOption. RequiresNew, enables the Web method to participate as the root object of a transaction. The default is TransactionOption. Disabled.
You should set the BufferResponse property to true when you're returning more than 16KB of data and that data is being constructed on the fly for example, when you are retrieving and formatting records from a database.
You should be cautious about using session state in a Web service because it can tie up server resources for an extended period of time. If you use session state with a popular Web service, you will apply heavy demands to random access memory (RAM) on your Web server.
