Andy Edinborough

The idea of implementing remoting will give most programmers instant heartburn.  Granted, I’m not an expert on all the existing remoting solutions, but I haven’t found one that works intuitively.

All the different solutions I’ve seen require just about double the code.  You write a method once, then write a wrapper for the method to implement remoting. 

Furthermore, they often require special handling to make sure the contextual variables are maintained.  For example, when I was working with CSLA recently, I was appalled to see:

customer = customer.Save();

The Save() method executes remotely, so the customer object that comes back has a separate memory reference.  Surely, we can get around this. 

So I set out to write my own.  I had 4 main goals.  I wanted to be able to:

// Remote any method with no code changes to the business object
Remoting.Execute(customer.Save);

// Executes remotely, and updates the object
Debug.Assert(customer.ID > 0);

// Execute an anonymous method and update the contextual variables
int x = 0;
Remoting.Execute(() => { x = 1; });
Debug.Assert(x == 1);

// Handle anonymous types, generics
var answer = Remoting.Execute(()=>new { y = x + 1 });
Debug.Assert(answer.y == 2);

The initial library has been published to http://remoting.codeplex.com/.  The code works, but needs testing and refractoring.