long running web service

[tomas]

Hello Telerik.

I am running some sort of exporting procedure on the server which is started by web service. I can exactly say how many files have been already exported and how many left.

How can I visualize the progress to the user in Silverlight application, please?

Thanks Tom

[Miroslav]

Hello tomas,

You can use the BusyIndicator if you don't want the users to be able to interact with the application while loading:

http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/#BusyIndicator/FirstLook

or the ProgressBar's indeterminate mode (IsIndeterminate property) if you do:

http://demos.telerik.com/silverlight/#ProgressBar/FirstLook

Hopefully this is what you are looking for,

Sincerely yours,
Miroslav
the Telerik team

[tomas]

Thank you, but this is not what I am looking for.

I would like to show something like

2 of 50 documents converted (4 % finished)

How can I achieve this?

Thank you very much.

tom

[Miroslav]

Hello tomas,

The ProgressBar can be as part of the view, say:

<telerik:RadProgressBar Minimum="0" Maximum="50" Value="2" />

The text can be a simple TextBlock that you updated together with the value of the ProgressBar when needed.

Sincerely yours,
Miroslav
the Telerik team

[tomas]

Hello Miroslav.

Yes, I know. But what I dont know is how to receive the status of finished, remains status from web service.

I think I must use more then one tread on the client to update the UI.

Do you have some common patter how to solve this?

Thanks Tom

[Miroslav]

Hi tomas,

All web requests in Silverlight are asynchronous, so the UI thread should not normally be blocked by a service call unless you are explicitly joining a thread.

Once you have established a session progress updates could happen in two ways:

- Polling - by constantly invoking a web method that returns the progress
- Push - by using a duplex service that will notify the Silverlight client once there is an update.

This talk has more information:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/silverlightws/archive/2010/04/04/mix-2010-talk-what-s-new-in-wcf-in-silverlight-4.aspx

and a sample project:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/silverlightws/archive/2009/09/30/having-a-pollingduplex-service-and-any-other-wcf-service-in-the-same-website-causes-silverlight-calls-to-be-slow.aspx

Please note that using a duplex service is essentially client -> server polling under the hood  and it may not scale very well.

Kind regards,
Miroslav
the Telerik team