Add support for streams in a contract

[DNikitenko]

It is not possible now to declare a method returning Stream, e.g.

public interface IComputingService
{
    Stream GetBigFile();
}

In my use case machines need to transmit big index files between each other, and the file size can be up to 4 GB. There is no possibility to create a byte array more than 2GB. Even if it would be possible, it's undesirable to copy the whole file to memory of both sides of a communication channel.

When using WCF, streamed transmission mode can be used to achieve that. Here is an example of NetTcpBinding configuration:

private static Binding GetBinding()
{
    var binding = WcfHelper.GetNetTcpBinding();

    // Expand properties to allow the transfer of bigger files (> 100MB)
    var netTcpBinding = binding as NetTcpBinding;
    if (netTcpBinding != null)
    {
           netTcpBinding.TransferMode = TransferMode.Streamed;
           netTcpBinding.MaxReceivedMessageSize = Configuration.Instance.MaxSizeOfIndexFileInBytes;
    }
    binding.ReceiveTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(60);
    binding.SendTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(60);

    return binding;
}

It would be nice to have the same feature in the IpcServiceFramework.

[jacqueskang]

Thanks for your proposal and I totally agree that support streaming is a great idea.

[jacqueskang]

Sorry I didn't find my time to implement streaming support for v2.