This feature enables the similar code generation for WCF Core services as WCF Domain services. The client proxy code and configuration will be automatically generated or updated when the solution is being built.

Let’s do a quick walk-through to better understand this feature.

WCF Client Proxy Code Auto Generating/Updating

Step 1: We create a Silverlight application using the “Silverlight Application” template, with “Enable Silverlight RIA service” option selected. The “SilverlightApplication15” solution is created which composes of “SilverlightApplication15” project as client and “SilverlightApplication15.Web” project as server.

Step 2: We add the “Silverlight-enabled WCF Service” item to the “SilverlightApplication15.Web”.

Step 3: We build the solution. We select “Show All Files” in “SilverlightApplication15” project in the Solution Explorer. We can notice a “GenerateWcfClientCode” folder is created composing of the WCF client proxy code named as “ServiceReference.cs”. We can also see the client configuration file is created named as “ServiceReferences.ClientConfig”.

Step 4: We can open the MainPage.xaml.cs file and write the client code to invoke the service.

If we make changes to service code, the client code will be updated accordingly after we build the solution.

“Add Service Reference” can work well together with this feature in the same Silverlight solution.

Opt out of “WCF Client Proxy Code Auto Generating/Updating”

We can manually add “<DisableAutoServiceReference/>” property in the proj file of client projects to opt out of proxy auto generation/updating. For example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<Project ToolsVersion="4.0" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">

  <PropertyGroup>

     ……..

    <UsePlatformExtensions>false</UsePlatformExtensions>

    <ThrowErrorsInValidation>true</ThrowErrorsInValidation>

<LinkedServerProject>..\SilverlightApplication2.Web\SilverlightApplication15.Web.csproj</LinkedServerProject>

<DisableAutoServiceReference>true</DisableAutoServiceReference>

  </PropertyGroup>

Once we set this property to true, all the auto generated client proxy code and configuration will be removed after building the solution.

WF4 provides powerful messaging activities to achieve close integration with WCF. However, manually configuring a set of messaging activities to consume a WCF service would be tedious.

This blog introduces how Visual Studio 2010 can help you consume a WCF service in WF4 very effectively.

If you are familiar with WCF, Visual Studio’s Add Service Reference feature (ASR) feature should be nothing new to you. In workflow 4.0 projects, you can still ASR!

I will describe the basic usage of this feature below.

1. Prepare a sample WCF Service

Open Visual Studio’s New Project dialog, create a sample service from WCF Service Application template. This application exposes Service1 with 2 operation contracts:

[OperationContract]
string GetData(int value);

[OperationContract]
CompositeType GetDataUsingDataContract(CompositeType composite);

Now build the project.

2. Add a Workflow Project to the solution

Add a Workflow Console Application project to the solution. Name it “MyTestWF”.

3. Add Service Reference

Right Click on MyTestWF project, and select “Add Service Reference…” The Add Service Reference Dialog will open. Now Click the “Discover” button in the dialog, the sample WCF service we created previously will be automatically found.

Click OK and wait for a few seconds, you will see the following message box.

Just click OK to dismiss it. You may want to check the “In the future, do not show this message” check box if you do not want to see this message again.

In this demo, I used “Discover” button to find the sample service in the same solution. If your WCF Service is already running, simply specify the metadata address in the Address text box and click “Go”.

4. Build workflow project, you should see a set of activities being generated in the toolbox

Visual Studio generates one activity for each operation. The activity name is the same as the operation name. Using these activities, you can call the service operations.

5. Consume the activities

Consuming WCF services with the generated activities is just Drag & Drop! Following demonstrate a simple scenario

      1) Drag a Sequence activity (from Toolbox Control Flow Category) to the workflow

      2) Drag the GetData activity to the Sequence activity. Observe the properties of the GetData activity

    Looking at the GetData operation contract,

    [OperationContract]

     string GetData(int value);

     It is easy to understand that the “value” field is the input integer you can pass to the service and the “GetDataResult” field is where you can put an string    variable to store the returned results.

    3) To store the returned results, we add a string variable v1 to the sequence.

    Click the Sequence and then click the “Variables” button at the bottom of the designer, the variable designer will open. Add a string variable v1 there.

     4) Click the GetData activity, modify the “value” field and “GetDataResult” field as following

     v1 will store the result returned from the service.

    5) Now the workflow is ready to invoke the service.

    Before running the workflow, we may want to use a WriteLine activity to display the v1 value.

     6) Click the WriteLine activity, press F9 to set a breakpoint

     7) Set the Workflow Console Application project as the startup project, press F5 to start debugging

     8) Program will break at the WriteLine activity, press F10 to step over, open the Console window, you should see “You Entered: 5”

      That is all. You consumed a WCF service in WF 4.0!

In Visual Studio 2010, this feature supports three WF 4.0 project templates: Activity Library, WCF Workflow Service Application and Workflow Console Application. They are all under Workflow node. When doing Add Service Reference in other project types, we will generate normal client proxy code.

I will talk about advanced usage of the ASR generated activities, including usage of the “EndpointConfigurationName” field and correlation handling in upcoming blogs.

Here is an example as below: HTTP Error 500.21 – Internal Server Error Handler “svc-Integrated” has a bad module “ManagedPipelineHandler” in its module list.

In this article, I will list some common issues and their resolutions for your reference.                                          

1. Check whether your local IIS is installed properly and can run

I won’t discuss how to install local IIS here (You can search via bing according to your Windows version and IIS version), but tell how to validate whether your IIS is installed properly. You can input https://localhost in the IE browser. If you see the IIS default page as below, or see a similar page if your IIS has a different version, you will know you IIS is installed and running well.

2. Check whether your ASP.NET is registered and installed correctly

Sometimes, when you installed Visual Studio before installing IIS, it may cause ASP.NET registration issue in IIS and your service cannot be hosted in IIS. You can open Visual Studio Command Prompt tool (Start->All Programs->Visual Studio->Visual Studio Tools->Visual Studio Command Prompt. You need to open it as Administrator if your OS is Windows Vista or later version.), and run “aspnet_regiis.exe -i” or “aspnet_regiis.exe -ir”. You can try again after then and the issue should be fixed.

3. Check whether your Application Pool is configured correctly in IIS

Some issues may be caused by the mismatching between the target setting of your project/website and Application Pool configuration in IIS.

For example, we have a WCF service project targeting .NET4.0 and have trouble to host it in IIS.

Please find your website in IIS Manager, select it, and click “Basic Settings” located in the right panel. You will see the windows as below, which contains the info of the Application Pool you are using. You can see your application uses DefaultAppPool.

You need to further check the setting of DefaultAppPool. You can find the “Application Pools” node in the IIS Manager, choose the DefaultAppPool, and click “Basic Settings” located in the right panel. You will see the windows as below. Please double whether check the .NET Framework version is v4.0.xxxxx. If not, it doesn’t match with your 4.0 project. Please change it to the .NET4.0 version.

4. Check whether your WCF component is installed and registered correctly

Sometimes only WCF services cannot be hosted in IIS, while other ASP.NET services can. It may because WCF component isn’t installed and registered correctly in IIS. You can open Visual Studio Command Prompt tool (Start->All Programs->Visual Studio->Visual Studio Tools->Visual Studio Command Prompt. You need to open it as Administrator if your OS is Windows Vista or later version.), and run “ServiceModelReg.exe –ia”. You can try again after then and the issue should be fixed.

WCF Test Client is a debugging tool to test WCF service. It is very useful to help developing WCF service. In this blog, I will share some tips on how to launch WCF Test Client in Visual Studio.

There are 2 ways to start WCF Test Client out of Visual Studio. The first way is double click WcfTestClient.exe in the folder “Visual Studio installation path\Common7\IDE”. The other way is type the “WcfTestClient” command in “Visual Studio Command Prompt” as shown in Diagram 1:

Diagram 1

In Visual Studio, different project templates provide different ways to launch WCF Test Client. The following form is all the WCF related project templates in Visual Studio 2010 Beta2:

Template Name	Template Path	.NET Framework Version
WCF Service Library	New Project -> WCF Node	3.0/3.5/4.0
WCF Service Application	New Project -> Web Node	3.0/3.5/4.0
WCF Workflow Service Application	New Project -> WCF Node	4.0
Sequential Workflow Service Library	New Project -> WCF Node	3.5
State Machine Workflow Service Library	New Project -> WCF Node	3.5
Syndication Service Library	New Project -> WCF Node	3.5/4.0
WCF Service	New Web Site	3.0/3.5/4.0

Form 1

WCF Service Library, Sequential Workflow Service Library and State Machine Workflow Service Library:

When starting debugging (F5), it will host the service in the WCF Service Host by default. And the WCF Test Client will automatically start for you to test the service. Please see the Diagram 2:

Diagram 2

If you don’t want to start WCF Test Client when pressing F5, you can edit “Project Properties -> Debug -> Command line arguments” as shown in Diagram 3:

Diagram 3

WCF Service Application and WCF Workflow Service Application:

If you set the focus on the .svc or .xamlx file in Solution Explorer, WCF Test Client will start when pressing F5. Please see the diagram 4:

Diagram 4

If you don’t want to use WCF Test Client when pressing F5, you can add the setting of EnableWcfTestClientForSVC property in .csproj.user file to disable WCF Test Client:

<Project>

  <ProjectExtensions>

    <VisualStudio>

      <FlavorProperties>

        <WebProjectProperties>

          <EnableWcfTestClientForSVC>False</EnableWcfTestClientForSVC>

        </WebProjectProperties>

      </FlavorProperties>

    </VisualStudio>

  </ProjectExtensions>

</Project>

By the way, .csproj file has the default value setting for EnableWcfTestClientForSVC property. If .csproj.user doesn’t set the EnableWcfTestClientForSVC property, it will use the default value in .csproj file:

<Project>

  <ProjectExtensions>

    <VisualStudio>

      <FlavorProperties>

        <WebProjectProperties>

          <EnableWcfTestClientForSVCDefaultValue>False</EnableWcfTestClientForSVCDefaultValue>

        </WebProjectProperties>

      </FlavorProperties>

    </VisualStudio>

  </ProjectExtensions>

</Project>

The following form shows the detail logic for which client is launching by setting the specific property of .csproj.user and .csproj files:

.csproj.user file setting	True	False	Not Set	Not Set	Not Set
.csproj file setting	True/False/Not Set	True/False/Not Set	True	False	Not Set
client launching	WCF Test Client	IE	WCF Test Client	IE	IE

Form 2

For example, in a project group who are using the source control, the .csproj.user file won’t be checked in, while the .csproj file will be checked in. If you only want to change the launching behavior for yourself, you should change the .csproj.user file. If you want to change the launching behavior for the whole group, you should change the .csproj file.

Syndication Service Library:

WCF Test client doesn’t support to test the kind of service, so the WCF Test client won’t start in this project.

WCF Service (Web Site):

WCF Test Client won’t be launched automatically when pressing F5. If you want to get the same launching behavior as WCF Service Application, you can change the websites.xml file as following (at “C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WebsiteCache” folder. XP/2003 is in a similar location):

<DesignTimeData>

                <Website RootUrl="C:\" CacheFolder="WCFService1" EnableWcfTestClientForSVC="true"/>

</DesignTimeData>

You need to close your solution, and then make the above change.  It only loads the property up when project load time and will overwrite when the project closed.

If you developed WCF service in VS2008, you should have used a set of WCF Tools integrated in it. If you start to use WCF technology, please read this two blog articles to gain some preliminary knowledge for WCF Tools in Visual Studio: Introducing WCF Tools in Visual Studio 2008 and WCF Tools in VS2008 SP1: Introducing the new features and enhancements

In VS2010, our team continues adding new tools and enhancements in WCF Tools space. I will list them one by one and hope they can provide you better service developing experience:

Adding Service Reference in WF4.0 applications:

When you add service reference in a WF4.0 application, you will see the same “Add Service Reference” dialog box as before, to enable you to input service address and generate client proxy. Unlike generating proxy code, a set of pre-configured XAML activities will be generated, which are corresponding to the operations of WCF service. After building your WF application, these activities will be shown up in Toolbox. You can drag and drop them to be part of your work flow, and use them to invoke the WCF service.

To be mentioned, this activity generation experience is applied specifically for WF4.0 project types. Proxy code will be generated for other project types.

New WCF Workflow Service Application template

In .NET 4.0, we added a new WCF Workflow Service Application template, to help creating long-running Workflow services.

Simplified configuration file in WCF Service templates

The configuration is simplified in WCF 4.0, such as:

- Make the <Services> section as optional, and gain the service endpoint info when hosting the service

- Support the name of service behavior, binding configuration, endpoint configuration to be “”, so that the configuration settings can be shared by multiple services and inherited.

So the configuration file in WCF service templates is simplified accordingly to reflect these changes. Below is an example for WCF Service Application template:

F5 automatically launch WCF Test Client in WCF and WCF Workflow Service application

In VS2008, we only support this experience in the projects created from WCF Service Library template. In VS2010, we expand the scope to WCF and WCF Workflow Service application templates.

After you create an application from one of these templates, select the specific service .svc or .xaml file, and press F5, WCF Test Client will be automatically launched to help you test your service.

WCF Test Client supports DataSet types

WCF Test Client can support testing DataSet types used in WCF services or .NET services.

The new service publishing mechanism in WCF and WCF Workflow Service application

When you create a service application from WCF or WCF Workflow Service Application template, you can use a new publishing wizard to deploy it. For applications created from WCF Service Library template, the publishing wizard is the same as in VS2008.

The features in this new publishing wizard include:

Web Package: You can create a .zip file for your application, which will contain IIS settings, web contents, SQL Server DB, etc. This package can be taken to any server and installed either via IIS Manager UI Wizard or even via command line or API for automated deployment scenarios.

Web Configuration Transformation: You can transform your development time web.config file to production/deployment time web.config file.

One-Click Publish: You can easily use IIS remote management service to publish the application to remote server, by create a publish profile of your hoster account or of various testing servers.

Useful Link:

WCF and WF 4.0 new features:  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/netframework/cc896557.aspx

WCF, WF and AppFabric Hands on Lab:  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc814756.aspx

https://download.microsoft.com/download/6/F/E/6FECE629-D1AB-4B47-BEFC-6772F375A6B5/VS2008SP1Readme.htm

I list two WCF tools related items here.

2.3.7 Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Tools

2.3.7.1 WCF Service Library project cannot be hosted by WCF Service Host when relative path is set to "Output Path" on the Properties page

When you create a WCF Service Library project, you can change the Output path from the default bin\debug\ to a relative path such as "." or ".." on the Build tab of the project Properties page. If you then try to debug the service, the service cannot be hosted by the WCF Service Host and this message is displayed: "A project with an Output Type of Class Library cannot be started directly."

To resolve this issue:

On the Build tab, input the fully qualified path instead of a relative path.

2.3.7.2 Error message when "Add New Item" is selected in a WCF Service Library project in Visual Studio with TFS plug-in

If you create a new WCF Service Library project in Visual Studio with the TFS plug-in, you may see an error displayed when you select Add New Item in this project. After clicking OK to close the error dialog box, the item service is added successfully and works as expected.

To resolve this issue:

Click OK to dismiss the error dialog box.

WCF Test Client: How to change the folder that stores temporary client configuration files and assembly files

Prior to VS2008 SP1, WCF Test Client put the temporary client configuration files and assembly files in “My Document” folder. When this folder is set as a network share, sometimes WCF Test Client cannot invoke services with the error message: “An error occurred creating the configuration section handler for system.serviceModel/bindings: That assembly does not allow partially trusted callers…”

In VS2008 SP1, we improve the experience:

First, we change the default folder from “My Document” to %temp%, because %temp% folder has less probability to be set as a network share.

Second, we also offer command line options to let the folder configurable. You can change it to your specific folder and can also restore to the default one. Snapshot below shows the detailed format of these commands.

WCF Test Client fails to add services with mismatched svcutil version

Sometimes, when svcutil.exe isn’t properly installed or installed with an earlier version in Windows SDK v6.1, WCF Test Client won’t work with the error message: “Error: Unrecognized option ‘targetclientversion’ specified.”

Please double check the below version info:

-          The SvcUtil.exe shipped with Windows SDK v6.0A (which comes with VS 2008) is of version 3.0.4506.648 or above

-          The SvcUtil.exe shipped with Windows SDK v6.1 is also of version 3.0.4506.648 or above

-          The WcfTestClient.exe shipped with VS 2008 is of version 9.0.588.0

If the version number is wrong or svcutil.exe isn’t properly installed, the resolution is:

-          Install the latest version of Windows SDK

-          Or copy svcutil.exe from Windows SDK v6.0A to Windows SDK v6.1

Installing Biztalk Services SDK will introduce an unrecognized endpoint to WCF Test Client

If you have installed the Biztalk Services SDK on top of VS 2008 SP1, the Biztalk Service SDK introduces an endpoint with relayBinding in the <client> section of the <system.serviceModel> element in the machine.config file.

When adding a service to WCF Test Client, an unrecognized endpoint will be generated whose contract is IMetadataExchange. Then Test Client will report error: “The contract ‘IMetadataExchange’ in client configuration does not match the name in service contract…”. The screenshot is attached below:

After you click “OK”, the service node will appear in the tree with the redundant “IMetadataExange (sb)” section. There is no impact for the functionalities.

The screenshot is attached below:

If you will frequently add services to WCF Test Client, there is a work around to avoid the inconvenient error message:

When you run the WcfTestClient, modify the machine.config file (located in \WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\CONFIG) by commenting out the <client> section below that is nested in the <system.serviceModel> element. Re-enable the section when you use the Biztalk Services SDK.

<client>

   <endpoint address="" binding="relayBinding" bindingConfiguration="metadataExchangeRelayBinding"

contract="IMetadataExchange" name="sb" />

</client>

<bindings>

   <relayBinding>

    <binding name="metadataExchangeRelayBinding" />

   </relayBinding>

  </bindings>

Service Configuration Editor cannot be launched in VS after some improper installation steps

A customer reported a issue, and I would like to share with you here.

The user has VS2008 SP1 Beta, .net3.5 SP1 Beta and Windows SDK v6.1 installed in his machine, and then he installed VS2008 SP1 release and .net3.5 SP1 release. There should be some improper steps.

When he created a new WCF Service Library project and tried to launch Service Configuration Editor (SvcConfigEdior.exe) to edit the app.config file, an error dialog pop up:

There are two issues:

-          SvcConfigEditor.exe in v6.0A seems disappear

-          Windows SDK v6.0A is still the default SDK after installing Windows SDK v6.1. So VS tried to find SvcConfigEditor.exe in Window SDK v6.0A

To resolve the problem, I will recommend using the “Windows SDK Configuration Tool” to set the default SDK.

To avoid this problem, please make sure to uninstall the Beta versions first: not only the related programs but also the updates, before installing the Release versions.

The WCF tools team from China is proud to introduce the new features we delivered in VS2008 SP1!

à  Enhancements for WCF Test Client:

n  Support XML Serializer, Message Contract, Dictionary and Nullable<T> types

n  Support WCF Session

n  Support standalone mode, and enable connecting and testing services from third-party

n  Support client-side configuration file customization

à  WCF Service Publishing, which allows publishing of services to Local IIS, File System, FTP site or Remote site directly from the WCF Service Library projects.     

In addition, we also did several small enhancements that directly reflect our customers’ feedback.

Such as: We provide a way for you to control whether or not to automatically launch WCF Service Host for a WCF service project when debugging another project in the same solution.

Want to use these tools to build you WCF service application? You can find VS 2008 SP1 here.

Now VS2008 SP1 Beta is coming! Are you curious how this release can help you on WCF tooling experience? We really did a lot to help easily build your WCF Service! I would like to share with you the enhancements for current tools and also the new features in SP1 Beta!

By the way, if you haven’t used our tools before, it doesn’t matter. You can first read the article here before continuing.

WCF Dev Tools:

In SP1, we mainly focused on enhancing WCF Test Client, so that we can provide better testing experience whether you are a new comer to the WCF world or an experienced WCF developer:

-          Support XML Serializer, Message Contract, Dictionary and Nullable<T> types in SP1. WCF Test Client can now be used to test most of types used in WCF Services or other .net services.

-          Support WCF Session.

-          Support standalone mode.  In VS2008, Test Client is launched only when debugging a WCF Service in VS. In VS2008 SP1, Test Client becomes a standalone tool. You can open Test Client, then add, remove or refresh services to test them.

-          Support client-side configuration file customization.  When adding a service to Test Client, the client configuration is automatically generated. In VS2008, you can only view it. In VS2008 SP1, you can not only edit it, but also save the changes you made so that you can re-use it each time when you re-launch the same service in Test Client.

The other cool new feature is to allow publishing of services to Local IIS, File System, FTP site or Remote site directly from the WCF Service Library projects. Previously you can only do this from web-based WCF service projects.  After publishing your service, you can again use Test Client to see whether the service works well.

In addition, a couple smaller enhancements are also worth mentioning, since they directly reflected our customers’ feedback:

-          In Add Service Reference, if the WCF service projects are in the current solution, we improved the user experience by building the projects automatically.

-          We provide a way for you to control whether or not to automatically launch WCF Service Host for a WCF service project when debugging another project in the same solution. Look for the WCF Options tab of the WcfServiceLibrary project properties page.

Here is a summary of all our WCF dev tools:

If you're interested in helping us shape the future of this feature, tell us what you think by filling in this survey. The survey will close on Wednesday, March 19th 2008.