WCF Data Contract and Reference Entity Data?

Question

Soliciting feedback/options/comments regarding a \"best\" pattern to use for reference data in my services.

What do I mean by reference data?

Let\'s use Northwin

Answer 1

I typically build in lazy loading to my complex web services (ie web services that send/receive entities). If a Person has a Father property (also a Person), I send just an identifier for the Father instead of the nested object, then I just make sure my web service has an operation that can accept an identifier and respond with the corresponding Person entity. The client can then call the web service back if it wants to use the Father property.

I've also expanded on this so that batching can occur. If an operation sends back 5 Persons, then if the Father property is accessed on any one of those Persons, then a request is made for all 5 Fathers with their identifiers. This helps reduce the chattiness of the web service.