How can I bypass Operation Contract limitation of a WCF Service when calling "Update Service Reference" in VS 2008

Question

I am having trouble with a single Wcf Service that we have in an application. It has about 150 [OperactionContract] within it. I can now no longer Update Service Reference within Visual Studio 2008.

I receive all kinds of strange errors, varying from "Socket Forcibly Closed" to "Invalid Type" and other strange messages when I try to call an update. If I comment out 10-20 operations it works fine.

I have read all kinds of posts here, on MSDN, and many blogs. They all point to binding configurations that need to be changed, either on the main binding or on the MetadataExchange binding.

My problem is that I have tried all of this and have yet to get it to work reliably.

I am self hosting the service in an application, and that same application is also the client. They share the same configuration file (currently) because we are in the process of breaking the application into 2 pieces via the Wcf service layer.

Here is an excerpt showing my bindings I have defined:

<system.serviceModel>

    <bindings>
      <netTcpBinding>
        <binding name="NetTcpBinding_IRhinoServices"
                 closeTimeout="00:05:00"
                 openTimeout="00:05:00"
                 receiveTimeout="00:15:00"
                 sendTimeout="00:05:00"
                 transactionFlow="false"
                 transferMode="Buffered"
                 transactionProtocol="OleTransactions"
                 hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
                 listenBacklog="100"
                 maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647"
                 maxBufferSize="2147483647"
                 maxConnections="100"
                 maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">
          <readerQuotas maxDepth="2147483647"
                        maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
                        maxArrayLength="2147483647"
                        maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
                        maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />
          <reliableSession ordered="true"
                           inactivityTimeout="00:10:00"
                           enabled="false" />
          <security mode="None">
          </security>
        </binding>
      </netTcpBinding>

      <customBinding>
        <binding name="customMex">
          <textMessageEncoding>
            <readerQuotas maxDepth="2147483647"
                          maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
                          maxArrayLength="2147483647"
                          maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
                          maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />
          </textMessageEncoding>
          <tcpTransport transferMode="Buffered"
                        maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"
                        maxBufferSize="2147483647"/>
        </binding>
      </customBinding>

    </bindings>

    <client>
      <endpoint address="net.tcp://localhost:8523/RhinoServices"
                binding="netTcpBinding"
                bindingConfiguration="NetTcpBinding_IRhinoServices"
                contract="RhinoServicesReference.IRhinoServices"
                name="NetTcpBinding_IRhinoServices">
        <identity>
          <dns value="localhost" />
        </identity>
      </endpoint>
    </client>

    <services>
      <service behaviorConfiguration="CounterSketchServer.RhinoServicesBehavior"
               name="CounterSketchServer.RhinoServices">
        <endpoint address=""
                  binding="netTcpBinding"
                  contract="CounterSketchServer.IRhinoServices">
          <identity>
            <dns value="localhost" />
          </identity>
        </endpoint>

        <endpoint address="mex"
                  binding="customBinding"
                  contract="IMetadataExchange"
                  name=""
                  bindingConfiguration="customMex"
                  listenUriMode="Explicit" />

        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="net.tcp://localhost:8523/RhinoServices" />
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
    </services>

    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="CounterSketchServer.RhinoServicesBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="false" />
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>

  </system.serviceModel>

I need to be able to generate the proxy class by clicking on Update Service Reference, which has worked well this past 2 weeks, till I hit this mysterious limit.

Most of the examples I have seen to resolve this talk about http bindings for mex, but I would like to stick with just netTcp if possible since I am self hosting.

Can anyone please help me?

Thank you.

* UPDATE *

I have tried @Aliostad suggestion, and it appeared to work well at first. Until I tried some of our Wcf calls which update UI elements. These happened to work when using NetTCP bindings with the Proxy Class generated by Visual Studios (Add Service Reference) tool. But when using the Channel Factory it does not work.

I have tried looking at the SyncrhonizationContext in Juval's WCF book, but nothing I did seemed to work.

I have tried using both Named Pipes and NetTCP as the binding for the Channel I create using the ChannelFactory, and they do seem to behave very differently from eachother related to long running Wcf operations, but neither work to update UI elements.

My services are actually running in a plugin for the Rhino 3D CAD engine, and ceratin calls (Render, etc.) trigger UI in Rhino to update. I assume this is causing a thread boundary issue. The exception I receive is: attempted to read or write protected memory

If anyone has any suggestions to use the ChannelFactory method effectively in this scenario or to fix my problem with too many Operations in a given Wcf class to generate the Service Proxy I would appreciate your help.

Thank You!

Answer 1

First of all, I believe the only solution is to remove the reference, and add it back again.

---

Alternatively, if you own both the Client and the Service - which I seem to get from reading your question that you do - may I strongly suggest that you share you service interfaces with your clients - instead of using a service reference?

This is definitely the preferred approach when you own both client and the server (and will save you from all the troubles you are having) and I believe it is also preferred if you do not own the client, you just share the entities/dtos and the interfaces.

This requires you to:

• Create a class library project for you entities/dtos. Share it with the client.
• Create a class library project for you service interfaces. Share it with the client.
• Create a class library project for you service implementation. Stays only on the server.
• The client uses ChannelFactory<T> to create factory and then create a proxy by calling CreateChannel()

Answer 2

I have got the Update Service Reference working again from both SvcUtil.exe and from Visual Studio 2008.

To do so I added the following section to the config files for both devenv.exe.config and SvcUtil.exe.config:

<!-- CUSTOM MetaDataExchaning Binding to all for LARGE WCF Services -->

<client>
    <endpoint name="net.tcp" binding="netTcpBinding" bindingConfiguration="GenericBinding"
    contract="IMetadataExchange" />
    <endpoint name="http" binding="wsHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="SecureBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />
</client>

<bindings>

    <netTcpBinding>
        <binding name="GenericBinding" maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647"
        maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647" >
            <readerQuotas maxDepth="2147483647" maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
            maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
            maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />
            <security mode="None"/>
        </binding>
    </netTcpBinding>

    <wsHttpBinding>
        <binding name="SecureBinding" maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647"
        maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647" >
            <readerQuotas maxDepth="2147483647" maxStringContentLength="2147483647"
            maxArrayLength="2147483647" maxBytesPerRead="2147483647"
            maxNameTableCharCount="2147483647" />
            <security mode="Message">
                <transport clientCredentialType="Windows" />
            </security>
        </binding>
    </wsHttpBinding>
</bindings>

Then in my application Server plugin, I am still programmatically creating the ServiceHost so to enable meta data exchange I added another endpoint:

        // DATA ENDPOINT
        NetTcpBinding binding = new NetTcpBinding(SecurityMode.Transport, true);
        Uri baseAddress = new Uri("net.tcp://localhost:8555/RhinoServices");
        _rhinoServicesHost = new ServiceHost(typeof(RhinoServices), baseAddress);
        _rhinoServicesHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IRhinoServices), binding, baseAddress);

        // META ENDPOINT
        BindingElement bindingElement = new TcpTransportBindingElement();
        CustomBinding customBinding = new CustomBinding(bindingElement);
        ServiceMetadataBehavior metadataBehavior = _rhinoServicesHost.Description.Behaviors.Find<ServiceMetadataBehavior>();
        if (metadataBehavior == null)
        {
            metadataBehavior = new ServiceMetadataBehavior();
            _rhinoServicesHost.Description.Behaviors.Add(metadataBehavior);
        }
        _rhinoServicesHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IMetadataExchange), customBinding, "MEX");

        _rhinoServicesHost.Faulted += RhinoServicesHost_Faulted;
        _rhinoServicesHost.Open();

I can now update the references regardless of the number of contracts.

I have to admit though, during this whole process the Attempted to read or write protected memory error that cropped up hasn't gone away since I switched back to this method.

So I guess I have to still track that down...

Also I found this solution on a different question (click to view), answered by @trendl. Thank you for your help.