Creating a stateful client-server architecture in WCF
I am currently in the planning stages for a fairly comprehensive rewrite of one of our core (commercial) software offerings, and I am looking for a bit of advice.

Our current software is a business management package written in Winforms (originally in .NET 2.0, but has transitioned into 4.0 so far) that communicates directly with a SQL Server backend. There is also a very simple ASP.NET Webforms website that provides some basic functionality for users on the road. Each of our customers has to expose this site (and a couple of existing ASMX web services) to the world in order to make use of it, and we're beginning to outgrow this setup.

As we rewrite this package, we have decided that it would be best if we made the package more accessible from the outside, as well as providing our customers with the option of allowing us to host their data (we haven't decided on a provider) rather than requiring them to host SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, and IIS on the premises.

Right now, our plan is to rewrite the existing Winforms application using WPF, as well as provide a much richer client experience over the web. Going forward, however, our customers have expressed an interest in using tablets, so we're going to need to support iOS and Android native applications as clients, as well.

The combination of our desire to offer off-site hosting (without having to use a VPN architecture) and support clients on platforms that are outside of the .NET ecosystem has led us to the conclusion that all of our client-server communication should take place through our own service rather than using the SQL Server client (since we don't want to expose that to the world and SQL Server drivers do not exist, to my knowledge, for some of those platforms).

Right now, our options as I see them are:

* Write a completely custom service that uses TCP sockets and write everything (authentication, session management, serialization, etc.) from scratch. This is what I know the most *about*, but my assumption is that there's something better.
* Use a WCF service for transport, and either take care of authentication and/or session management myself, or use something like durable services for session management

My basic question is this:

### What would be the most appropriate choice of overall architecture, as well as specific features like ASP.NET authentication or Durable Services, to provide a stateful, persistent service to WPF, ASP.NET, iOS, and Android clients? ###

 
Creating a stateful client-server architecture in WCF
===

I am currently in the planning stages for a fairly comprehensive rewrite of one of our core (commercial) software offerings, and I am looking for a bit of advice.

Our current software is a business management package written in Winforms (originally in .NET 2.0, but has transitioned into 4.0 so far) that communicates directly with a SQL Server backend. There is also a very simple ASP.NET Webforms website that provides some basic functionality for users on the road. Each of our customers has to expose this site (and a couple of existing ASMX web services) to the world in order to make use of it, and we're beginning to outgrow this setup.

As we rewrite this package, we have decided that it would be best if we made the package more accessible from the outside, as well as providing our customers with the option of allowing us to host their data (we haven't decided on a provider) rather than requiring them to host SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services, and IIS on the premises.

Right now, our plan is to rewrite the existing Winforms application using WPF, as well as provide a much richer client experience over the web. Going forward, however, our customers have expressed an interest in using tablets, so we're going to need to support iOS and Android native applications as clients, as well.

The combination of our desire to offer off-site hosting (without having to use a VPN architecture) and support clients on platforms that are outside of the .NET ecosystem has led us to the conclusion that all of our client-server communication should take place through our own service rather than using the SQL Server client (since we don't want to expose that to the world and SQL Server drivers do not exist, to my knowledge, for some of those platforms).

Right now, our options as I see them are:

* Write a completely custom service that uses TCP sockets and write everything (authentication, session management, serialization, etc.) from scratch. This is what I know the most *about*, but my assumption is that there's something better.
* Use a WCF service for transport, and either take care of authentication and/or session management myself, or use something like durable services for session management

My basic question is this:

### What would be the most appropriate choice of overall architecture, as well as specific features like ASP.NET authentication or Durable Services, to provide a stateful, persistent service to WPF, ASP.NET, iOS, and Android clients? ###

 