The case of the missing binding

Today, while preparing a training session on WCF, I decided to use Eclipse’s Web Services Explorer (WSE) to view and interact with a WCF-based service (using plain WSHttpBinding).
However, after processing the service’s WSDL description, WSE showed a service with an empty binding list.
Knowing that some web services stacks don’t support WSDL descriptions divided into multiple [...]

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WCF asynchronous processing and IIS hosting

Recommending the post “WCF Request Throttling and Server Scalability“.
It contains important information regarding WCF’s asynchronous processing when hosting on IIS. For example, I was unaware that
So in the release of .Net 3.0 and 3.5, WCF implemented synchronous versions of HTTP module and handler instead of asynchronous ones

meaning that even with asynchronous service implementation (asyncpattern=true), a [...]

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Using Zermatt’s claims model on WCF: ClaimsPrincipal.Current

In the last post, I briefly presented Zermatt’s claims model. This model can be used in both WCF based services or ASP.NET based web applications.
Beginning with this post, I will describe how this new claims model is integrated into WCF, using WCF’s extensibility points, and also what are some consequences of this integration.
Once again, keep [...]

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Authorization policies in WCF: from tokens to claim sets

In a previous post, I presented some classes for handling security tokens in WCF. This post describes the process that begins with the authentication of a token and ends with a collection of claim sets, available at the AuthorizationContext (see this previous post).
One of the classes referred in the last post is the SecurityTokenAuthenticator class, [...]

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Security tokens in WCF

In WCF, security tokens are represented by classes derived from the SecurityToken abstract class. However, this class exposes little functionality:

A SecurityKeys property, to access the keys associated with this token.
Two properties, ValidFrom and ValidTo, with the token’s validity period.
A couple of methods for creating and matching key identifiers.

Most of the functionality related to security tokens [...]

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Claims and claims sets in WCF

How are claims represented in WCF?
As described in an earlier post, the Identity Metasystem proposes a model where identities are defined by claim sets.
The WCF platform adopts this view and provides a claims-based authentication model, mostly defined in the System.IdentityModel.dll assembly, introduced with .NET 3.0.
In both the Identity Metasystem and the WS-* specifications, the claim [...]

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WCF and the AsyncPattern property (part 3)

This is the third in a series of posts about the AsyncPattern in WCF.
The previous two posts described the purpose and usage of this property on the service side. The present post addresses the client side.
AsyncPattern at the client side
The AsyncPattern=true is used at the client side to expose an asynchronous programmatic interface to a [...]

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WCF and the AsyncPattern property (part 2)

This is the second in a series of posts about the AsyncPattern in WCF.
The previous post described the consequences of setting AsyncPattern = true on an OperationContractAttribute.
However, a question still remains: when and how to use AsyncPattern = true on the service-side?
When?

The WCF documentation states that

“Use an asynchronous approach in a service operation implementation if [...]

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WCF and the AsyncPattern property (part 1)

The OperationContractAttribute is used, in WCF, to define operations on a service contract. This attribute contains the AsyncPattern property that can be used to implement or use services asynchronously.
AsyncPattern at the service side
Consider the following excerpt

1: [ServiceContract]
2: interface IService {
3: [OperationContract]
[...]

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Asynchronous delegate invocation of a WCF client channel

In an older post, Nicholas Allen stated that an asynchronous delegate invocation on a WCF client channel object will block until the response is received from a service.
The only given explanation was:
The problem is that BeginInvoke knows about and only works with specific types of proxy objects, which do not include the proxy objects [...]

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