Web Service streaming sql data

I have to write a web service method that will pass back many rows of data, I was thinking about steaming the data back from a sqldatareader but when I sent up to stream I get the error cannot convert to io.stream. Is there a way I can maybe wrap a memorystream around the sqldatareader and pass that back?

Here is the simple method:

[WebMethod]
public Stream RetrieveFile()
{
SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(Properties.Settings.Default.ConnectionString);

SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand("select * from tblcase_casedetail", connection);

connection.Open();

SqlDataReader reader = command.ExecuteReader(System.Data.CommandBehavior.SequentialAccess);

reader.Read();

return reader;


}

the error returned
Cannot implicitly convert type 'System.Data.SqlClient.SqlDataReader' to 'System.IO.Stream'

I don't want to buffer since there is a chance of a out of memory error, I want to be able to just stream rows of data to a client that will insert the rows into a similar data table.

I'm working in VS2012 and SQL Server 20108 R2

Tags: Webservice