[Vrs-development] Execution of web services by the VRS

[Eric Altendorf]

I need some help here, folks.

So, I'm working on the VRS service manager (the module that 
orchestrates the actual fulfillment of external web service 
requests).  I'm at a point where I need to figure out just how the 
service manager actually invokes a web service.  This of course ties 
into the whole execution environment question.

The service manager is a C# program.  Web services (aka executable 
data objects / EDO's) should be able to be written in "any language". 
These services should be able to be loaded, unloaded, and reloaded in 
memory by the service manager.  I see two possibilities:

* A service written in C# or another IL-compatible language should be 
able to be loaded via reflection into the same process.  Nice for 
efficiency.

* A service written in a native binary format would have to execute in 
a separate process.  Hopefully this separate process would be written 
to load and not exit until asked to unload or reload...and somehow 
the results would need to be efficiently communicated back to the VRS 
process.  I'm not sure how this would work.

Any ideas?  I'm willing to postpone the second and concentrate on the 
first, which should be as easy as defining a "VRSService" or "VRSEDO" 
or "VRSWebService" or some such interface, with methods like 
"serve()", which web services would have to implement.

Please share any thoughts...

eric

PS: Cross-posting to DotGNU dev maillist for greater visibility...
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