Return Stream from WCF service, using SqlFileStream

Question

I have a WCF service, from which users can request large datafiles (stored in an SQL database with FileStream enabled). These files should be streamed, and not loaded into m

Answer 1

Normally I might suggest wrapping the stream in a custom stream that closes the transaction when disposed, however IIRC WCF makes no guarantees about which threads do what, but TransactionScope is thread-specific. As such, perhaps the better option is to copy the data into a MemoryStream (if it isn't too big) and return that. The Stream.Copy method in 4.0 should make that a breeze, but remember to rewind the memory-stream before the final return (.Position = 0).

Obviously this will be a big problem if the stream is big, ... but, if the stream is big enough for that to be a concern, then personally I'd be concerned at the fact that it is running in TransactionScope at all, since that has inbuilt time limits, and causes serializable isolation (by default).

A final suggestion would be to use a SqlTransaction, which is then not thread-dependent; you could write a Stream wrapper that sits around the SqlFileStream, and close the reader, transaction and connection (and the wrapped stream) in the Dispose(). WCF will call that (via Close()) after processing the results.