Referencing a Published WCF Service - wcf

Question

I have followed "Walkthrough: Creating and Accessing WCF Services" from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386386.aspx to create a WCF Service Library. I tested it in WCF Test Client. Then in another desktop application (let's call it A) that eventually I would like to use this WCF I added the Service Reference that WCF Test Client gives
http://localhost:8733/...
and that worked too.
Now, I am in the process of publishing and using the published version's service reference. Here is what I did, I published the WCF Service Library by
right-clicking the solution
Choosing Publish
clicking ...
Choosing File System and typing
\mywebaddress.example.com\wwwroot\myWCFService
Looks like the publish is successful, because by navigating to
\\mywebaddress.example.com\wwwroot\myWCFService
in a file browser, I see that Web.config, .svc and bin folder are created.
Now, I am trying to refer to this published version from my desktop application A. I am not certain what options I'm supposed to choose
Here is what I have tried:
Choose Add Service Reference in the desktop application A,
I tried
\mywebaddress.example.com\wwwroot\myWCFService
in the Address field of Add Service Reference, Pressed Go and received the error An error (Details) occurred while attempting to find services at
\\mywebaddress.example.com\wwwroot\myWCFService.
When clicking on Details, I get There was an error downloading
\\mywebaddress.example.com\wwwroot\myWCFService
Access to the path
\\mywebaddress.example.com\wwwroot\myWCFService
is denied.
If the service is defined in the current solution, try building the solution and adding the service reference again.
Alternatively, I tried Advanced option from Add Service Reference and from there Add Web Reference... and in the URL field typed
http://www.example.com/myWCFService/
then when pressing the arrow button I get 401 - Unauthorized: Access is denied due to invalid credentials.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied. and in the Web services found at this URL: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: discoveryError & mexError.
Th latter error was when in the IIS setting I had Anonymous Authentication Disabled. After enabling Anonymous Authentication the error becomes:
403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.
Web services found at this URL: There was an error downloading
http://www.example.com/wcfservice/_vti_bin/ListData.svc/$metadata
The request failed with HTTP status 404: Not Found.

Answer 1

When I just now published a WCF Service Library project with Visual Studio 2013, I was offered the options for file system, Local IIS, and FTP Site. When I choose "Local IIS", it shows me both IIS Express and my local full IIS.
I just published to IIS by selecting "Default Web Site" and clicking the "Create Web Application" button in the tooolbar. I named the application, clicked "Open", then clicked "Publish" on the main publish dialog.
This published a bin folder with the service DLL and other libraries it needed, a web.config, and a .svc file. I was able to browse to the .svc file with no problem. I was even able to add it as a service reference to another project.
If you are always going to host your services in IIS, and if you don't need to keep a clean separation of layers (perhaps you're only writing a few, simple services), then I recommend you use the "WCF Service Application" template instead. This creates a Web project in which to host the services, as well as the .svc and .cs files necessary for the services themselves. That's more like the only option that was available for ASMX web services.