WCF Service used by Java client and Java Service used by WCF client

Question

I am working on a web service interface, where my WCF application works both as a Client and a Service. There are multiple Java clients that need to connect to my web service. I will need to accept stream of images and documents and send back stream of converted images.

I would also need to connect to other Java services to send the image streams as a payload to be stored in a database. I am new to web services, is there good documentation on how to enable streaming contracts between WCF and Java clients and vice verse.

If I want to return other information along with the stream of (group) images to the client, how would I do that? Like the size of each image, the offset in the stream, so they can separate images.

Thanks

Answer 1

In order to return additional information with your images you will need to define a DataContract which contains the metadata elements as well as a collection to contain your images. Perhaps representing your image collection as a byte array rather than just returning a raw stream of images? There are several ways to address the issue, however the best solution depends on your design requirements.