I have two WCF services in a single solution (let's call it the service solution). I've deployed those services on a remote machine. I have another solution in which I consume those services by creating a reference to the services on the remote machine (let's call it the client solution). The code for both services is up to date on the remote machine (AFAIK), because I have deployed the most up to date code to it.
The issue is that in the service solution I can debug one of the services but not the other. The one that fails gives this error when I put a breakpoint on it.
The breakpoint will not currently be hit. The source code is different from the original version.
The question is, what could be different between the two WCF services to allow one to be debuggable and the other not.
Related
I have a couple of wcf services which will call a registration service at startup (through a custom ServiceHostFactory). All these services (including the registration service) are running in the same app pool. I installed appfabric to auto-start all the services. I won't explain all the detailed settings (because I think it's not necessary yet), but in short, the services use net.tcp bindings and is running in IIS 7.5 on Windows 7.
The problem:
When I set all services to auto-start it will begin with one (random) service, this service tries to connect to the registration service. But somehow this registration service won't start-up. It looks like it wants to start all services sequentially.
The (not wanted) solution 1:
When I put the registration service in it's own app pool everything works fine and alle services come online in a matter of seconds and register themself.
The (not wanted) solution 2:
When I disable the auto-start and try to access one of the services after a iisreset, it all works fine. The service will try to register itself and the registration service in his turn will start.
I'm new to appfabric, so it might be some simple configuration issue. The weird thing though is that it won't work whith auto-start, but seems to work fine with a manual start.
Any idea's?
There is no priority in AppFabric Auto Start feature. You can't assume that one service will always be started before the others. Also, you can't assume they will start all at the same time.
For the specific scenario, it's recommanded to use WCF 4.0 Discovery and Announcement. Announcement feature enables service to announce their availability (by sending Hello and Bye announcements) whereas Discovery feature allow clients to discover service address at runtime.
All your services are on the same server ? could be pertinent to use a namedPipeBinding.
i can't find any good architecture explanation of how can WCF SHOULD be part of a main-server with multiple clients.
in my solution, i want to have a central WCF service (hosted in windows-service on windows server machine).
The central service is the only one that's connected to the DB.
all the clients, are connecting to this main service, login, and get having a duplex communication.
via that main service, one client can connect another one. or when one client using the main service to change the DB, the main service updates all other clients.
for doing that, i added in the main service the InstanceContextMode.Single attribute, and in the windows-service, i init ServiceHost with the WCF-service singleton.
it works. so so..
i can continue and search where the problems are, and how to fix them, but it looks like something here is not right, like i'm not supposed to do it this way.
i could really use an advice on how WCF service should be used as a main service with multiple clients, that require common memory.
it's basically for ~20 clients with not too intensive operations, but i still want the option to let them all communicate simultaneously with the main service, and not only one by one.
Is it possible to run multiple instances of the same XPC service using the XPC APIs found in Foundation.framework (NSXPCConnection, etc.)? The docs don't provide much insight on this matter.
EDIT: Did a quick test, and it seems like only one instance of the service is running even though I created two XPC connections. Is there any way to have it run another instance?
A bit late, but the definitive answer to this question is provided in the xpcservice.plist manpage:
ServiceType (default: Application)
The type of the XPC Service specifies how the service is instantiated.
The values are:
• Application: Each application will have a unique instance of this service.
• User: There is one instance of the service process created for each user.
• System: There is one instance of the service process for the whole system. System XPC Services are restricted to reside in system frameworks and must be owned by root.
Bottom line: In most cases there is a single instance of an XPC Service and only in the case where different applications can connect to the same service (not even possible when the service is bundled with an app), will there be multiple instances (one-instance-per-app).
I believe XPC services designed for one instance per multiple connections. Probably, it is more convenient to manage named pipes with one running executable. So, the most likely it is impossible to create multiple instances simultaneously.
Since XPC services should have no state, it should not matter, whether one ore more instances are running:
XPC services are managed by launchd, which launches them on demand, restarts them if they crash, and terminates them (by sending SIGKILL) when they are idle. This is transparent to the application using the service, except for the case of a service that crashes while processing a message that requires a response. In that case, the application can see that its XPC connection has become invalid until the service is restarted by launchd. Because an XPC service can be terminated suddenly at any time, it must be designed to hold on to minimal state—ideally, your service should be completely stateless, although this is not always possible.
–– Creating XPC Services
Put all neccessary state information into the xpc call and deliver it back to the client, if it has to persist.
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man5/xpcservice.plist.5.html
ServiceType key in XPCService dictionary: Application or User or System
But this ‘ServiceType’ is irrelevant… IF Service is embedded in an application bundle then it will only be visible to the containing application and will be, by definition, Applicaton-type services. A subsequent connection request from an application to a service will result in a new connection to an existing service.
I know I'm late to the party, but while you can't do this with plain XPC,
there's library (a component of OpenEmu) that should be able to do what you're asking: OpenEmuXPCCommunicator
I need to create a Windows Service to watch a folder on our network and action files that are placed within it. The process is quite slow and I need the ability to check the progress from a client application (which will be running in about 10 places on the same network as the machine running the Windows service).
Is hosting some WCF service in the windows service the right way to go about this and if so, are there any resources on how I would do this?
Thanks!
it seems a reasonable approach to me.
you can get details of how to host a WCF service inside a windows service in the MSDN how to
This code project page also has an example.
you might need to debug start up issues with the service, and I find adding a
Debugger.Launch();
to the beginning of the OnStart method is the easiest way of doing that. it enables you to debug through the start up process of your service and see any exceptions that occur.
I have a WCF test service and a test client in the same solution. The service is configured to run on localhost (Ie, "http://localhost:8731/Design_Time_Addresses/MyService/Service") I run the client app and it correctly invokes the service and gets back the correct answer. I've verified via logs that it's definitely running the service that's local to my machine.
However, I can't debug into the service when running the client. WCF is supposed to allow just stepping through, but no breakpoints on the service get hit, and stepping in to the service call doesn't work either. Has anyone ever seen this?
I've checked all the obvious stuff like "is the PDB file being generated?" -- yes, it is. If I run the service project by itself, then hit it with some test client, breakpoints get hit correctly. So debugging on the service works. I can even explicitly "attach to remote process" and debug the service that way. But WCF will not automatically step from the client to the service.
I've had this happen as well. Curiously it seems to happen after I make changes to the build configuration (from x64 to x86). Here's how I've been able to fix it:
Right-click the solution, select Properties.
Under "Startup Project" switch from "Single startup project" to "Multiple startup projects".
Set Action to "Start" for the WCF project.
Even though I'm hosting the project in the local IIS server (not the VS Development Server) this solves it, which is a little puzzling. I suspect that setting a project to "Start" also causes VS to attach to the process for debugging.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb157685.aspx
For Visual Studio multi-configurations:
In the Property Pages of your solution, ensure that the "Configuration" for your web-service is set for "Debug", not "Release".
Are you using the automatic WCF service hosting feature in Visual Studio? You can check this by opening the project properties of your WCF service project and navigating to the WCF Options tab. Is the Start WCF Service Host when debugging another project in the same solution checkbox checked? If it is, then this explains the problem.
What's happening is that when you run your client, a separate process is created to automatically host your WCF service. Because it is a separate process, you will not be able to "step into" it when debugging your client. You'll have to run two separate debug sessions, one for your service and one for your client.
An easy way to do this is to put a call to System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break() in the startup logic for your service. When your service is automatically started by the WCF service host, you'll be prompted to debug it, allowing you to open a second instance of Visual Studio for its debug session.
Also when using VS debug and attaching it to the w3wp.exe process and you have specific port bindings other than http:80:* you must have the debug > web in VS set to the site and port http is running on.
Yes, I got the same problem, WCF uses another processs.
At last, I found a way, i start a new instance(debug->start a new instance) of WCF service first, then start the client side, the breakpoints in the WCF service hits!
One other reason for not stepping into WCF service may be the size of your data that is passed to the WCF methods.
For ex., I was passing an array of dobules of size 1000, and I was getting a bad request error (400) with seeing how the method is run. I made the size 500 and now it debugs the WCF.
In my case, I had published it using Release configuration. You need to select Debug here.
I had similar problem. WCF hosted by WCF Service Host, requests tested by WCF Test Client. My problem was caused by space in build configuration name. As soon as I used configuration name without spaces, debbuging worked.
I guess the real problem was the build output folder ending with folder named by the configuration name.
#msulis - yes, thanks, this remedied it for me. I had also changed recently, the target CPU from any to x86. I couldn't reply directly to you message for some reason so apologize if this comes up as an "answer".