what are the limitations of a .net web api service?

Question

I admit I am not wholly familiar with the .net webapi, but I have just been handed a project that a previous developer started and explained prior to his leaving that using the webapi services that we could instantiate a service that would continually compare file data with database data if one was newer than the other it would update either the database or the file. The trick is that their is a old PowerBuilder Com piece that extracts or compresses depending on whether it is going to the database or visa versa.

Additionally there will be real time requests for files (data) which will require those requests to be elevated in the process for being sent to the Com object as it were.

With this rather lengthy concept laid out, can a webapi service actually run as a continuous service as described? My understanding was or is that it cannot, and that a different service approach would be required using the webapi to manage the queues and messages for real time requests. Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance.

Russ

Answer 1

WebApi is not a platform for continuous services. Its purpose is just to provide an interface to your application over HTTP.

In this scenario, WebApi would only be useful in its ability to accept requests. The data in the request can then be used to query your long running internal systems for data, or to update or create new data. WebApi embraces the HTTP verbs (GET, POST etc) for this exact purpose, making HTTP the protocol of your application's state.

Also, with regard to returning data. WebApi simplifies the serialization of a complex object into javascript (by default, overridable if need be). This is useful when your Api is consumed by clients speaking json.