I am using a WCF web service client to send and receive SOAP messages from a non-WCF web service. I want to control timeouts but really confused by the different timeout settings presented on MSDN.
Is there a simple list of settings for a WCF client (regardless of the server--where I know if server has shorter timeouts they will rule!)? Does it matter by binding or contract (XmlSerizalizer or MessageContact) type?
Have you seen: Timeouts WCF Services? I think that particular question/answer fits what you are looking for.
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I'm a WCF newbie, and I need some help to begin with a project:
I will have a managed application (server) that needs to communicate (messaging system) with several clients over the internet and vice versa.
What is the best approach to achieve this?
using wsDualBinding?
UPDATE
I decided to use the NetTcpBinding mode instead.
It depends on what capabilities your service needs to expose, and what type of clients you need to support. Any of the HTTP-based bindings will work over the internet, its simply a question of the way the data is encoded.
A summary of the built-in bindings and what they support can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731092.aspx
But the most common are:
BasicHttpBinding - This is a basic web service-style binding, usable by any SOAP client.
WebHttpBinding - This allows your service to be used by non-SOAP HTTP clients
WsHttpBinding - This allows your service to use extended service features like transactions and sessions.
WsDualHttpBinding - This is required if your service needs a duplex channel, meaning your service needs to make callbacks up to the client.
Since you specifically asked about the dual binding:
If you are writing an application that needs to be able to make a callback from server into the client, then a dual binding is really your only option. Since you specifically mentioned chat, however, I don't think a dual-channel service is going to work very well.
The way the callbacks work in WCF is that your client makes a call to the service, using a dual channel, and must provide an implementation of the callback interface. The server can use this to make calls to the client for the duration of the service method call; the callback context is per-service-call, so once that call returns, it is no longer valid. In other words, your server cannot just asynchronously "call into" your client, it has to wait for the client to "poll" the server. And if you're going to do that, you don't really need the callback anymore.
Honestly, I don't think I would use WCF for an interactive bi-directional chat application, but I can think of two possible options to do so:
Do the polling client option, using a simple BasicHttpBinding on the server and continuously ask for new messages.
Set your client applications up to self-host a local WCF service, and provide the endpoint information to the server when you log in. This requires your clients to accept incoming connections, which gets messy (but if you can pull it off, I'd go for a NetTcpBinding here.)
WSDualHttpBinding is not a good choice for internet. Callback works great only in local network (intranet) that has no Firewall and NAS restrictions.
See this post for more details:
Connecting over internet to WCF service using wsDualHttpBinding times out
Use WsHttpBinding if you want to set up server to server communications (that should work for WPF).
Use WebHttpBinding if you are planning to use data from Javascript.
I am currently developing a WCF duplex Service for 2 clients. The first client would be an asp.net webpage which upon receiving a posting, it will send the data over to the service. When the service receives the data, it will then AUTOMATICALLY send it to the second client which is a winform app through the callback channel...
To make it simpler.
Asp.net will invoke the wcf
The wcf will reside on the iis server, same as the asp.net
WCF will require to send a data to the windows form application that is running on a client side. Only 1 instance of this application will be run at a time.
Your service should know nothing about the clients attached to it. Doing so pretty much breaks the intention of WCF.
A better solution might be to have your clients subscribe to "events" that your service can fire off. Or maybe the client can provide some information in their requests that indicates a service and method to call back to when needed.
I am starting a new webservice project which will be consumed by multiple consumer applications done in different technology like ASP, ASP.Net and PHP. I am planning to develop this service as a WCF service. I am new to WCF and I understand WCF is like umbrella tech which has all the features for developing a distributed SOA applications.
I would like to get your advice on whether my choice of opting WCF service over classic asmx service is correct. The consumer applications are existing application done different technologies as I said before. This service is a simple service that creates and updates user information in a centralized DB.
If my decision of choosing WCF is correct, then please let me know if there are any specific things I need to consider so that the existing application can consume my WCF service without any hiccups. In other words, I can provide a asmx service for this which they can consume directly without any issues (and currently they are consuming some of our asmx service. Since the current requirement is new I want it to be done with WCF). Likewise, the consumer should be able to consume my service like they consume asmx service.
I am asking this question because WCF provides additional features like security, etc. and hence the consumers should also follow the practice to communicate with the service.
Any advice is highly appreciated.
You probably want to use BasicHttpBinding in your WCF service and, although I'm not a PHP developer, I understand that PHP 5 has a SOAP library that can be used to create a service proxy based on the WSDL document exposed by the WCF service, assuming metadata exchange is enabled.
When one of clients changes some data on server I need to send a message from WCF service to all clients that makes them to download changed data. How can I make that?
You are looking for Publish-subscribe message exchange pattern where all client first have to register on the service (subscribe) when service receives new data it sends them to all other clients (publish).
WCF support this when using duplex communication - Net.Tcp or WSDualHttpBinding. You can check complex artice by Juval Lowy in MSDN magazine.
i have been reading a little about REST services and i would love to know more.
I wonder if anyone can confirm, currently we have a wcf web service (ending in .svc) and we have many clients accessing (i.e. form linux, max and PC) ...
if i was to change my server to use REST then would the clients break?
If you CHANGE the service to be a RESTful format, then yes...existing clients would have to change.
If you ADD a RESTful endpoint and kept the existing endpoint as well, then no...existing clients could continue to use the old endpoint until they migrated their code to use the new RESTful endpoint.
Well, the two world are really SOAP vs. REST.
The "normal" WCF services using NetTcpBinding, basicHttpBinding, wsHttpBinding etc. are all using SOAP - your message is embededded in a SOAP envelope and sent across the wire, and the response comes back the same way. That's why you can't just point your browser to a WCF service and get data - browsers can't send and receive SOAP messages.
Advantages of SOAP: you have things like WSDL/XSD to clearly and very strictly define what your service does and what kind of data you send around.
REST is a totally different beast - no more SOAP, no more WSDL and XSD, no more creating a client that knows about the data types being shuffled back and forth - you just have URL's which represent resources, and you get back some XML - not a whole lot of system support for describing WHAT that XML will be - you'll have to hope the developer of the REST service provides some documentation about what can be retrieved, and what it looks like.
So REST is a totally different beast than SOAP, and it's implemented in WCF using the webHttpBinding.
So if you have existing "traditional" WCF service and clients, and you now switch your service to REST, then yes - 100% sure you'll break EVERY client....
Marc