Follow up question on this:

The customers will have some users directly accessing the network and some remote, hence the need for a
web service. Should I create a data access class for direct connection as well as the WS, or just use the
WS for all data access?

Inquiring minds wanna know.





>>Now what about something like inserting a record? Some table could have beaucoup fields which would mean just as
>>many params.
>>
>>Maybe create a client side data set, add the data to it, convert it to XML and pass that to the WS?
>
>Here's what we do. We use DataSets for everything. Not everyone will agree with this methodology ... plenty of people like to pass around business objects. Our philosophy is that our DataSets are similar to "business" objects, because we can add extra functionality to any DataSet if we want to.
>
>So, anyway, yes ... we use the same DataSets on the front-end and the back-end (same DataSet DLLs). And we use XML to pass the data from those DataSets to/from the WS methods.
>
>So, that means that yes, we pass the data as XML as a parameter of a WS method rather than pass a gazillion parameters to it. Let the back-end (DataAccess layer) figure out what parameters it needs to create to Save the data. You don't want to stick your WS methods with a gazillion parameters (which will change everytime you add new columns to your tables). Nope, not a good idea!
>
>You are *definitely* on the right track! =0)
>
>~~Bonnie