Hi Peter,

From your description, what you want to do is implement an async pattern
for calling a long run webservice method from an ASP.NET web application.

Yes, I think the pattern you mentioned is workable. Your current idea is
make the async processing tracking (and status management) at the
webservice side. the client calling web application will pull the status
and result by keep calling webmethod from that webservice, correct?

Here is an MSDN article mentioned another pattern for processing such
long-run task in async mode:

#How To: Submit and Poll for Long-Running Tasks
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms979200.aspx

the idea in it is put all the async call and status polling(and management)
at client calliing side(asp.net application). You use the auto-generated
async webmethod (beginXXX and endXXX) to call the webservice asynchornouly
and use the callback handler to update status table. Also, you need a
polling page to constantly poll the status table to check whether a certain
task has finished. The advantage here is that it doesn't require your
server-side webservice to change much.

BTW, since your webservice execute long-run task, you may need to adjust
the timeout setting (for both server-side ASP.NET webservice application)
and the client-side webservice proxy so as to avoid timeout exception. Here
is a former thread where I've mentioned the related timeout settings:

#Timeout Calling Web Service
http://bytes.com/forum/thread425416.html

Sincerely,

Steven Cheng

Microsoft MSDN Online Support Lead

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