AppFabric FAQ: Development
General Development
Q: What do I need to do to my WF or WCF applications to have then work in AppFabric?
A: There are no special requirements for creating an application beyond ensuring that the application can be hosted in the WAS hosting environment. The default project templates in Visual Studio guide you to build a service that will run in AppFabric. If you have applications that are hosted in WAS currently, they can be deployed to AppFabric without any requirement to modify the project source.
Q. If I have Workflow A and Workflow B, if I then have a new version of each, do I end up exposing 4 workflows?
A: As far as AppFabric is concerned each of these are separate workflow services. There is no explicit versioning support in AppFabric. You will have to implement it using .NET support for versioning.
Q: Are you planning to get rid of the existing WCF client test client and host?
A: No, the test client will work with the WCF services running on AppFabric.
Q: What .NET version of my WF or WCF service will run with AppFabric?
A: AppFabric primarily supports the .NET Framework version 4. Therefore any WCF or WF service written with an earlier version of the .NET Framework Libraries will not be able to take full advantage of the AppFabric features.
Q: When I build my services I want to minimize the number of configuration settings the admin can modify. So most of my WCF settings are hard coded. Since IIS has complex configuration model how can I hide this complexity from my users?
A: IIS 7 support configuration locking. While it doesn’t hide the configuration it provides a way to prevent the local admins from overriding the configurations defined globally.
AppFabric Caching
Q. How can I use AppFabric Caching with WF?
A: You can use the Cache API from Code activities or you can use the WF Caching Activity Pack from the Microsoft CodePlex site.
Q. How can I use AppFabric Caching with WCF?
A: You can use the Cache API in your service code or you can implement a behavior to declaratively apply caching as shown in the WCF AppFabric Caching Behavior Sample from the MSDN Code Gallery site.
Q: When using AppFabric Caching as an ASP.NET Session State Provider, can I be notified when an ASP.NET session expires?
A: Yes. You can use the available Cache Notifications techniques also for caches that are used for ASP.NET Session State. Don't forget to enable cache notifications on your cache.
AppFabric Hosting - AutoStart
Q. Does autostart make my services faster?
A: Yes. Testing shows that it can be an order of magnitude faster by using autostart.
Q. How can I write initialization code that is invoked when the service is auto-started?
A: You can implement a custom ServiceHostFactory or use the IIS 7.5 Application Warmup Module. For more information, see WCF and AppFabric AutoStart.
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