In my application I have a service layer which is remoted. There are some functions that are "non-query" methods, that is they do not return a domain entity or collection but perform some action on the server. I would like to get back the result of these calls and possibly any error messages. I am thinking of using a serializable "CallResult" object which has two properties: a boolean "Successful" property indicating if the function executed sucessfully and a "Message" string property containing the message from any exceptions that occured while executing the method. The client would only look at the Message property if the Successful property is false.
I am wondering if this is a good design or not and if there are any common alternatives.
One example would be a something like
Public CallResult AuthenticateUser(Credentials credentials);
If the credentials are valid the server returns a CallResult with a Successful property of true and an empty Message property (or possible a string to store the "ticket" or some such). If not successful, Message would contain the reason, such as "Invalid password", etc.
I think it is a good option in the context of what you are doing (I would probably go with a different approach altogether and use explicit messages for communicating to/from the services - but that is another story)
