Using WPF under Terminal Services

November 27, 2007

I'm looking for some advice on the use of WPF in a TSE environment.

A new project in my company wants to use WPF, but one of the supported

platforms is likely to be TSE. The application is quite graphics

intensive.

Here's the situation as I understand it:

Under Terminal Services, certainly under Windows 2003 Server, this

rendering will take place on the server side. I'm concerned that this

might mean that in this environment WPF applications could have

performance problems.

Windows 2008 Server (Longhorn) was supposed to have 'WPF remoting'

capability, which would mean essentially that XAML (or lower level

instructions) would be pushed down the wire and rendered on the client

side, thereby meaning less load on the server.

However, it appears that WPF remoting has slipped out from the release

schedule, and may not be delivered in Windows Server 2008 next year.

Some people suggest it may become available within a future service

pack, but obviously there is some uncertainty.

So could anyone advise me on whether using WPF would create

performance issues? Does anyone have practical experience in

delivering a WPF application using terminal services to more than 10

simultaneous users?

Thanks

Joe

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