I need to debug a Sharepoint WCF service that is deployed for Sharepoint 2010. However, a colleague needs to debug another Sharepoint service deployed on the same phyical machine. If we debug at the same time strange things occur with the Visual Studio debugger. For example, his debugger would break at breakpoints I have set, or I am seeing exceptions raised by his code. Mind you, we are debugging different services in different solutions. From the information I have gathered so far, this behaviour is like this because there is only one w3wp process per application pool that both the Visual Studio Debugger instances attach to.
So I figured I should try running my service in another applicaion pool to get a different w3wp.exe to attach to. Here is what I tried, but I am not sure, if what I attempted makes any sense, please clarify:
IIS Manager shows that there are two different Sharepoint application pools (excluding the one for Central Adminisitration) and a Site for each. So I tried deploying my service using the other application pool by setting the deployment location to the URL of the other site. However the virtual _vti_bin directory of the service still maps to the same physical directory ...\Web Server Extensions\14\ISAPI\. Deploying from Visual Studio works, but getting a ServiceReference does not. Trying to open <url>/_vti_bin/MyService.svc/MEX shows an error page telling me that therer is already a binding instance associated to the URL. So, I guess this is either not the way to do this, or it is simply not possible to "isolate" services in this way. I am very hesitant to just trial-and-error with IIS Manager or Sharepoint Central Administration settings, because I feel I don't know enough to avoid screwing things up.
Could someone tell me how I can solve this?
The URL you specify when deploying in Visual Studio can be misleading. If you have a sandboxed solution, it gets deployed to this location. If you have a farm solution, it gets deployed centrally and it uses the URL to figure out what application pool to recycle. If you have web application specific settings in the solution i.e. safecontrols), these will be applied to the web application hosting the URL.
The _vti_bin is available to every site in the whole farm; as is _layouts. Since a service will be exposed through multiple URL's (one for each site) the SharePoint team has created custom factory classes to make this possible. Check out one of the built in svc files, and you will see that it uses a special factory class. Use this in your svc file to expose your service in all sites.
As for the debugging, it's never a good idea to have multiple developers using the same machine. If you really want to do it, I suggest using two web applications with different application pools. That way each developer has their own process to attach to. If you use different accounts for the application pool, it makes it easier to find the correct one in the 'attach process' dialog.
Related
I am building a client-server application, this is all running locally on my computer whilst I am developing the system. However, eventually I would like to deploy the server-side part of the application to a server to run 24/7, enabling client applications to connect and consume the service at will. What I would like to know is, when I come to doing this would I simply just install the server-side application on the server, hit run and that's it? That just seems... well not right (to me), is this the way it is done? or is there a lot more to it? I imagine there is, but I can't seem to find any content on this subject.
FYI - the server is a self hosted WCF application.
You'd want to take your program's executable, support dlls and config files and drop them into a folder. Then create a Windows Service to run the program; if you don't use a Windows Service, the program will only run while you're logged on, which isn't good. As a Windows Service, a reboot of the server will bring the program back online even if you're not logged on.
Here's a knowledge base article from MS on how to make a windows service.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/251192
If you're program is compiled as a DLL, then create a small .exe program to run it (a wrapper) then deploy the program as described in the article.
Good luck.
My WCF service library, the console host for the service, and the client are all in separate Visual Studio solutions. Does this choice of organization impose a problem? I cannot seem to create the client proxy by using the Add Service Reference and Discovery features.
When I run the console hosted WCF service, then change focus to the Visual Studio solution for developing a client, invoke "add service reference" and "discover" it says "no services found in the solution". Do I have to develop the client code inside the same Visual Studio solution as I have developed the host code? That would seem unreasonable.
Having several projects for your WCF solution is a great idea - definitely stick with that!
But you cannot run the WCF host application from within Visual Studio and then use Visual Studio to add the service reference, too, at the same time....
So what you need to do is run the service host application from outside Visual Studio (find the directory, double-click on the EXE to spin up the host) and then you can add the client service reference inside Visual Studio.
In such cases I usually use a single solution file containing all projects across all subsystems + separate solution files for individual subsystems. This allows me to develop the system as a whole, and, at the same time, build individual subsystems separately. This way you can overcome any “editing-time experience” shortcomings, while preserving good separation and independence of subsystems.
Solutions are meant to have multiple projects in them. They are meant to be the level of organization that contains all of the projects you are working on at a time.
No, it's not unreasonable to put all of those related projects into a single solution.
I'm part of a distributed development team. We all work through terminal services, accessing a remote server where our applications are located.
We're working on a project in which a client application consumes a WCF service, which exposes all the business logic functionality.
In our development process, a developer is often asked to develop an entire use case from user interface to database access, including the service and the business logic.
In such cases the developer must be able to debug the functions/methods on the server side that she/he has build for a given use case. The problem with that is that the service must be run and when another developer needs to debug his/her work, an exception is thrown (I think it is 'AddressAlreadyInUseException' not sure) and the 2nd developer is not able to perform any kind of debugging at the service. This happens even thought we (off course) have different windows usernames and hence we are working in different sessions.
It's still possible for the client app. to continue working with the 'original' service instance since we're catching the exception at the service, but debbugging is impossible. And if the first developer stops the wcf service then the app. fails.
I would like to know if you could have any recomendation for us. My be there's some sort of tool available (even if we must pay for it) that could somehow isolate each developers' workspace at the server... or may be we just need to change something in the way we work.
I would be very grateful for any kind of advice or clue.
Best regards,
Gonzalo
I would recomend that each developer had their own copy of the server services.
When we develop, each developer has a full environment on their machine. As things are completed, they are checked in to the version control system. When the other developers get the lastest version, new functionality is spread to the other developers.
If I understand your setup, all developers are working against the same server, in this case a programming error of one developer will stop all development.
Hey man, the debugger connects through IP communication. That means if a service or process binds a listener, no other service or process can bind this IP port a second time.
That is the reason for throwing the exception.
In Citrix you have the Virtual IP configuration.
You can also consider to place a VM on the server that serves only for one developer. This would also solve this problem
I am in the process of setting up some IIS hosted WCF projects for continuous integration and am stuck trying to find the best and simplest way to get deployment automated.
Right now, I have the build and deploy working with CC.NET, MSBUILD and a batch file that copies the necessary files to the deployment folder, but I think there must be a better way.
Ideally, I'd like something like web deployment projects, but for WCF.
I would settle for a nice Power Shell script to copy all the necessary files and exclude all the fluff.
Well, there isn't anything stopping you from using a web deployment project for hosting your WCF class library. The SVC file will be picked up by IIS and routed appropriately. We use a standard deployment project and a custom action to create the IIS vroot so that we have a finer control over the settings but a standard web deployment project will do the job as well.
Unless you are running under IIS7 then as far as IIS is concerned it's just standard content that has it's own handler. When you get to Windows 2008 / Windows 7 Beta then things can change a bit as those versions have a very different handler model.
I've found this post to be really helpful: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332338.aspx
This depends very much on the technologies you are using. On a previous project, we used TFS, with Team Build. The result was that the WCF projects were built into a folder structure that matched their deployment structure. Additional tasks in the MSBUILD script triggered a deployment script (written in PERL, I think). This took care of all deployment tasks, from deleting old folders, creating the new, creating databases and populating with reference data, then deploying the service and web sites, and finally running Installation Verification scripts and publishing the results to a web site.
On the other hand, if all you've got is a hammer, then hammer away.
I've created a service for one of my apps. How do i create a system tray component in VB.net that can be used to monitor the progress of the service? Is there a way to have this installed via tcpip on multiple client machines such as those that are for our employees?
We do exactly that here, with the server running a really basic HTTP server on a configurable port on a separate thread that returns status in an XML format (nothing else, just that) -- the client just uses a web request to get the XML, before parsing it and displaying it appropriately.
This approach also allows for future extensibility (detailed status, sending service control commands, adding an association to an XSLT file elsewhere for use with a normal web browser, etc.)
You could use WCF for this. Using WCF your service would open up an EndPoint which would expose status information to callers. You could then build a tray icon application that can be deployed to the employees workstations. The tray icon application could periodically poll the WCF service the your Windows Service is hosting and get status information. I know #Johan mentioned Remoting already and this is a similar approach. I'd recommend WCF though as the programming API is more simple, IMHO, and WCF will give you more flexibility with regards to network transports, etc.
I guess your question is not about how to actually do the "traybar"-thing, but how to communicate with the service to get the information you want to show in the monitor/traybar-program?
It can be done in many ways, API is one way, use sendmessage/postmessage/getmessage is one way to make 2 running programs communicate with each other without having to store anything in files or databases first.
DDE is another way. If it needs to do the stuff via net then there is something called NetDDE, but I havent done anything with NetDDE I cant help anything there.
But about the API and DDE, feel free to ask more questions if you want some clarification.
I'll take the second question: Is there a way to remotely install software on client machines?
Yes. However it is very dependent on your environment. For example, if you have an Active Directory domain, you can use group policy to force installation of software on the client boxes.
If you don't like that or if you aren't on active directory, you can buy something like Altiris to push installs down.
Another option would be to use login scripts which would run a custom program to detect if your program is installed and take appropriate action. But then you are probably better off buying Altiris.
For the comunication part, i have used remoting before, and this works very well. With a little bit of configuration, you can even get it working to another machine.