I'm looking at creating a data query WCF service over a slow satellite connection and I really like WCF Data Services. The problem I see is that HTTP is a very verbose format and since everything I'm doing is internal and .NET, is it possible to use NetTcpBinding instead to reduce some of the overhead?
Is this even possible? Advisable?
No, WCF Data Services are built on top of REST, and REST itself is very intimately and completely based on the HTTP verbs like GET, PUT, POST etc. - you cannot run those over NetTcp, since those are intrinsically tied to the HTTP protocol stack.
Maybe there are other options for you to reduce the data being transmitted? Tweak your objects - trim the fat, if you can - both on the number of rows retrieved at once, and the number of attributes/data fields transmitted. That's probably you're most promising approach.