SqlClient/OleDbClient vs Remoting speed

[Mark]

Hi

I have prototyped a WinForms application that uses the Enterprise
Microsoft Data Access block to load data into a strongly typed
dataset. This works very well and is pretty fast.

My problem is that our customers will probably complain about having
the connections string (with username/password for the Mixed-Mode SQL
server) on the client.

I have investigated using remoting and the dataset's ability to binary-
serialize on an HTTP to pass the data back from the server - so that
the server is the only machine that needs to know to to connect the
the database. Unfortunately, this is about 3 times slower than using
the native SqlClient!

I wonder if someone can shed any light on why this should be so much
slower, and whether there is any comparibly-performing substitute to
the SqlClient/OracleClient libraries to loading data into a client
dataset?

I was thinking that perhaps an alternative would be to have a
webservice provide the connectiong string. The application in question
will be click-once deployed and will have a single-signon token that
the web service could use to authenticate and return the connection
string.

Regards,
Mark.

 

[Cowboy \(Gregory A. Beamer\)]

Passing a conn string is okay, as long as the web service can only be hit
through an SSL reference OR you are encrypting the string to go across and
have obfuscated the decryption on the client side. Otherwise, you have a
database connection string floating across the airwaves.

Another option is encryption of the conn string config section, which will
hide the conn string from the user. This is the method used in ASP.NET.

--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA

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