If my MVC project is referencing (regular project reference not service reference) a WCF service project, I am not communicating using HTTP right?
I want to make my WCF service exposed to multiple mobile and 3rd party clients via HTTP over the web, but my own application I'd like to use without HTTP due to higher performance.
Is what I'm currently doing achieving this?
If you are using a project reference (i.e. it appears under the "Reference" folder on not the "Service Reference" folder) then you are not using HTTP. You are making a call directly to an assembly/DLL in that case. I generally develop my applications so that there is a Service Layer (sometimes referred to as the Application Layer) that basically mimics the API that the web service presents. This is an assembly that can be referenced directly if I do not want to distribute this service. Then the actual web service is just a thin layer on top of the Service Layer that provides the actual WCF binding and contracts for distributed clients to call.
It depends on how you added it. If you did it via "Add Service Reference" and your app/web.config is littered with WCF client settings then it probably is going over HTTP. You should check the transport and address settings withing your configuration. If you see HTTP then, well, you're using HTTP.
Even if you switch to named pipes there's still an overhead. The fastest transport for local communication is probably the NullTransport sample Roman Kiss developed.
Related
In my VS solution, I created a console project, which I'm using as the client, and an empty project for the WCF service.
I then created the WCF service (created my contract and service type and manually constructed the app.config), and added a reference to the WCF service project in the client project.
However, when I called ServiceHost.Open() in the client, the endpoints weren't loading. I eventually determined that I needed to put all of the config information in the Client's app.config, rather than the service's app.config.
I'm not sure if this is normal, or if I'm doing something wrong. In the past, when I've used the WCF project template, this wasn't the case.
Yes, that is normal. Each .NET application (client, service, web site, etc.) has it's own configuration file. To be precise, there's a hierarchy of them, but the bottom end of that hierarchy is unique to the application.
This makes sense if you think about it -- the client would need to contact the service to ask for it's configuration, but it needs to know the endpoint information in order to even try to do that. So yes, the normal process is that client and service both have very similar information in their configuration files.
If you use Visual Studio's built-in tooling to do everything for you, it will automatically create and/or edit the configuration file for your client when you add a Service Reference to the project, copying from the metadata endpoint that WCF exposes for that purpose. Alternatively, you can use the WCF configuration editor tools to edit your client application.
Also, note that nothing actually enforces that your client and server have compatible settings; e.g. you can change the maximum sizes of many buffers/graphs/etc on one side, and not the other, and see some strange behavior. It's up to you to make sure both ends are working with mutually usable settings.
I have a WCF deployed on IIS. Now by adding web reference of it i am using it on my app.
So I have two questions:
Is it the best method of consuming WCF.
If the answer of first question is yes then what is the role of svcutil.exc, I mean what is the use of creating wcf proxy class. and if the answer is "No" then why?
It is the easiest solution if you develop with visual studio and have access the remote WCF service.
If you are developing using another IDE, you might want to use SvcUtil to generate your proxies.
If you prefer to have a simple CS file containing the generated client, you might also choose to generate it using SvcUtil.
You may also completely ignore SvcUtil and the Service Reference wizard and use the ChannelFactory class to generate proxies dynamically.
You should use "Add Service Reference" in Visual Studio (not Add Web Reference) for WCF.
It is the easiest way - since you can do it right in Visual Studio. What it does under the covers is basically call svcutil.exe (or you can do that manually, from the command line yourself), and create a service proxy class for use on the client side.
The use of svcutil.exe is many fold - you can create a client proxy class from a running service (or from an existing WSDL/XSD file), you can verify services, you can export metadata from a service for clients to consume, and a great many more options. It's the "Swiss Army Knife" of WCF tools.
WCF uses a concept that all calls to your service must go through a client proxy - this is the place where the entire WCF runtime lives, and where all the WCF extensibility points are located. This proxy converts your call to a method on the client into a serialized message that gets sent across the network to the server for processing, and it also handles "unpacking" the response from the call back into classes and objects on your client side for your use.
Adding a service reference is the quickest and easiest way but not always the best way. If you want performance then using ChannelFactory<T> is the way to go. You should know different ways to create a client side proxy and customisations that you can do.
An excellent resource is WcfGuidanceForWpf. Don't let the WPF in it scare you as it is really an excellent guidance for general WCF as well.
We currently have a WCF Service which is beginning to reach it's limits performance wise.
We have decided to add another server which will host another instance of the WCF Service.
We have web applications which must communicate with a specific server based on context... e.g. If the web application is dealing with objects from ServiceInstance1 then requests must be directed to ServiceInstance1's EndPoint. If the web application is dealing with objects from ServiceInstance2 then requests must be directed to ServiceInstance2's EndPoint.
I initially thought that a "Intermediate Service" or "Service Manager" could be created, the web application's Service Reference would be updated from the individual Service Instance to the "Intermediate Service" or "Service Manager" and said service would act as a "Broker" to the various Service Instances.
How is this accomplished?
I have currently added a ServiceReference to each service from the Manager however it seems that once a Service is "Referenced" it's types becomes specific to the that of the ServiceReference e.g.
ServiceInstance1's type's are all {ServiceInstance1}.
ServiceInstance2's type's are all {ServiceInstance2}.
I need the types to be the same on the web application end, so this obviously seems like the wrong way to do it.
I would also like that when methods are called on the client generated from referencing the "Intermediate Service" or "Service Manager" that the correct Service Instance is invoked, e.g.
IServiceManager.GetProjectById( {GUID} ) ->
Comes Back to ServiceManager ->
Determines which host has the project and returns the ProjectObject from the correct ServiceInstance.
Where ProjectObject is a Type Defined in ServiceInstance1 and ServiceInstance2.
I think the original service needs to have some of the DLL's pulled out so they can be referenced from the web application side and ServiceManager and a GenericWCF Client can be made.
If I am right hooray for me If someone can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it. If I am wrong can someone please scold me and show me how this is properly done!
The way to solve your problem is to create shared assembly with types used by both services. Reference this assembly on the client consuming your services (manager) and when creating proxies by Add service reference mark Reuse types from referenced assemblies.
What you are building is very simple message router. In WCF 4.0 there is additional support for routing services so you should check those features before developing your own. For WCF 3.5 MSDN magazine contains articles about building message router - part 1, part 2.
Just to Answer this and close it I wound up utilizing the Routing Strategy in .Net 4.0 and custom client class which I modeled after the generated classes from the Proxy.
Before I had the custom client ready I used the auto generated client code and I derived a class from it which allow me to change which service it was connecting to. I determined which service via a property which was made available on all service objects which were serialized.
Long story short this is working 100% as expected including the ServiceManager which can even be bypassed on certain calls which we allow.
We even have the ability to move a project from server to server during run time!
Thanks to everyone who helped! (Especially myself for actually doing the work without being spoon fed)
The easiest way to accomplish what you're trying to do is to stop generating your proxies using the server-hosted URL of the service. Instead, generate your proxies from the *.xsd and *.wsdl locally, and merely change the URL of the endpoint. Alternatively, you can use ChannelFactory<T> to generate proxies on-the-fly, and reference your interface .dll on the client side.
Once you've done that, you can use any common webserver load balancing technique to balance the load between the servers.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but Visual Studio's "Service Reference" is not useful, and should not be used, for services you develop. It's useful only for services developed externally, whose URL and contracts are likely to NEVER change. I personally have never had occasion to use it. For your own services, you should probably be using ChannelFactory<T> or a class based on ClientBase<T> to work out the proxies.
I have two related questions about Web services:
(1) I'm currently writing a set of applications, and it occurred to me that maybe I'm not using the right tool for the job. Here is the spec:
There are many Windows servers behind different VPNs and firewalls.
Each of the servers has a Windows service running, that reports various information about it to a centralized server, via a Web service, both of which I've written, and have access to.
So I'm both the producer and the consumer, and I'm staying on the same platform (.NET). Maybe a web service isn't the way to go? I'm using one purely because it's easy to write and deploy, and I'm the most comfortable with them. Should I really be using WCF for this?
(2) In the web service, I'm creating a State object to represent the state of the server, and sending it as a parameter. However, adding a service reference creates a proxy of the State class. It seems gacky to copy the properties of the State object to the proxy, and then send the proxy. Should I just replace the proxy class with the real class in the auto-generated code (i.e., include a reference to the State class instead)?
By "web services" I assume you mean an ASMX? I would go with WCF is possible, simply because you lose nothing but gain lots of flexibility. You could, for example, switch from XML-over-HTTP to Binary-over-TCP through a simple config change.
I would suggest to use WCF and use the Net.Tcp binding. It should be efficient enough for 300 clients. For the proxy class issue use the /reference option for the svcutil tool when you generate the proxy. This will allow you to share classes between server and client. I would not use this option if interoperability was a concern but since you stated that you develop both the clietn and the service and all in .Net it is a valid use in your case.
Your distinction between "Web Services" and WCF is a false distinction.
ASMX Web Services is the original .NET SOAP Web Service technology, introduced in .NET 1.0. It has been replaced by WCF, which can everything that ASMX can do, plus a whole lot more (including support for the WS-* standards).
Microsoft now considers ASMX Web Services, and the XML Serializer they're based on, to be "legacy technology". See "Microsoft says: ASMX Web Services are a “Legacy Technology”".
With WCF, since you have control of both sides of the operation, and can share the .dll in which the service contract is defined, you can and perhaps should be using ChannelFactory<IYourServiceContractHere> instead of auto-generating those ugly proxy classes with service references.
Here's the first hit I found on this topic: http://blogs.msdn.com/juveriak/archive/2008/02/03/using-channels-vs-proxies-in-wcf.aspx
If it is platform independent, I would certainly recommend WCF.
I've done exactly what your describing to great effect across more than 300 locations. I don't think you made the wrong call.
Another thing you could consider that would work well is using MSMQ. In this case, however, you'll either need to write event triggers (COM) or an event queue processing service.
I am developing a WCF web service and I used the WCF Service Application template to do that.
Does creating a "WCF Service Application" fulfill this requirement?
What are the advantage of creating a WCF Service Library over a WCF Service Application?
A service application includes a website host already setup for you. A service library is a library of services that a host can reference and startup.
If you start with a service library (recommended) you can then choose any host you wish (a windows service, IIS/ASP.NET, or even a console application) and you'd just reference your library from your new host. Choosing a Service Application limits your host to just IIS/ASP.NET (though this might be ok for your purposes, but will limit the protocols you can use).
Edit: Changes in IIS since I wrote this allow for a wider variety of protocols on ASP.NET activated services, so choosing a service application is much less limiting than before.
If all you have is the one project I see only added complexity if you separate for the heck of it. I used a library when I had some particular use cases where I had to host in both a windows service and in IIS.
For IIS you you can move the classes and interfaces to a library but keep your .SVC files in the web project. You must edit the .SVC files to point to the properly qualified classes.