Diagramming tools

Here's a quick list of simple and cool diagramming tools:

Yuml Class Diagrams.  Text based class diagrams.  The syntax can be a little awkward, but works well when you get your head around the syntax.
Web Sequence Diagrams Text based sequence diagramming web tool. Type some puesdo-code and the sequence diagram is drawn based on your text.
Gliffy free form diagrams. WYSIWYG style free form diagram tool.  Has templates for Sequence diagrams and others.  Pretty nice tool

70-513 WCF Study Notes

Skill measured in the exam

http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/exam.aspx?id=70-513

This is my raw notes I made while studying for the exam.

HOSTING

Its valid to not specify any end-points. Adding base addresses will infer binding, contract is inferred by service name.

DISCOVERY

To discover a service:
Create one FindCriteria object for each iterface and set their Duration properties to two seconds. Loop for 30 seconds total and invoke their Find methods.
To implement a "logger" that recieves service start and stop announcments use the AnnouncementService class not the AnnouncementClient class.

RSS CONSUMPTION FROM A CLIENT

SyndicationFeed has an Items property : SyndicationItem
TextSyndicationContent : SyndicationItem
+Text : string

CUSTOM BINDING - DEFINING THE ORDER OF ELEMENTS (TRSMTET)

Transactions
Reliability
Security
Message Patterns
Transport upgrades/helpers
Encoding
Transport

MESSAGE QUEUEING

To deliver to Dead Letter queue use Reject enum value for receiveErrorHandling.
Poison messages use the Move, or Drop
Fault is the default value. (Throws an exception).
Address of dead letter queue: net.msmq://localhost/system$;DeadLetter

REST JSON SERVICES

When using WebGet attrib must use a SVC file <%ServiceHost Service="TestService" Factory="System.ServiceModel.ActivationWebServiceHostFactory" %>
or the WebHttpBehaviour on the service.
Use webHttpBinding for Pox/Json and general WCF use from javascript.
Use enableWebScript for Ms AJAX usage.

ROUTING SERVICES

ISimplexDatagramRouter = Reflects a one way message exchange.
ISimplexSessionRouter  = Reflects a one way message exchange with a session aware channel.
IRequestReplyRouter    = Reflects a request-reply message exchange.
IDuplexSessionRouter   = Reflects a  duplex communication using a callback contract.
Cannot mix message patterns when routing.  For contracts that do, use IDuplexSessionRouter and use callbacks to route the responses.

PROXY USAGE

Closing/Disposing a failed proxy might throw. Rather use .Abort in the exception handler or finalise block.
Any Reuse of a closed proxy will result in ObjectDisposedException
Proxy's should derive from ClientBase<T>, T = ServiceContract.

SERVICE EXCEPTIONS

Use serviceDebug element in web.config
[FaultContract(typeof(FaultException<Order>))] is valid but received by client as FaultException.
[FaultContract(typeof(ErrorInfo))              is best, received by client as FaultException<ErrorInfo>.

PERFORMANCE MONITORING, LOGGING AND AUDTING

Use serviceSecurityAudit element in a behaviour to audit to event log.
setting <diagnostics performanceCounters="ServiceOnly"/> will only give service level counters (no endpoint or operation level counters are available).
EventLogs are added to the security log by default in IIS7+ or Application in IIS6.
Calls failed is talking about unhandled exceptions
Calls faulted is when FaultExceptions are thrown.
MessageLogging/Filters can contain operation level filters:
<add xmlns:addr="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing">addr:Action[text()='http://namespaceOfService/IServiceContract/OperationNameResponse']</add>
Configuring Logging:
<diagnostics>
<messageLogging logEntireMessage="true" logMessagesAtServiceLevel="true" logMessagesAtTransportLevel="true"/>
<sources>
<source propagateActivity="true" name="System.ServiceModel" switchValue="Warning, ActivityTracing">
<listeners>
<add name="ServiceModelTraceListener"/>
</listeners>
</source>
<sources>
</diagnostics>

mexHttpBinding is a valid binding. Useful when the same address is used for service call and metadata.

SECURITY

OperationContract has a protection level.
ServiceContract has a protection level that enforces a Minimum.
Message level security must be encrypted using a cert
Don't use SecurityAction.Assert only use .Demand.
Mulitple PrincipalPermission attributes allowed and are Or'ed.
wsHTTPBinding defaults to message security and client credential type Windows.

IMPERSONATION

TokenImpersontationLevel.Impersonation
Impersonates the user's credentials only on that service machine.
TokenImpersonationLevel.Delegatioin
Allows impersonation of the user's credentials on the service machine and other machines.
When ImpersonateCallerForAllServiceOperations is false Allowed results in no impersonation.
Required always results in impersonation.
ServiceSecurityAuditBehavior adds to windows event log in security section.
<machineSettings enableLoggingKnownPii="true"/> allows usernames and passwords to be logged in clear text in the WCF standard diagnostics logs. It is false by default.
You can implement custom message level security binding with TransportSecurityBindingElement.
Setting EstablishSecurityContext will not issue a token and require every call be re-authenticated.

CERTIFICATES

StoreName.My = Personal certs for logged in user
StoreName.Root = Trust Root CA's
StoreName.AuthRoot = Third party CA's

STREAMING

NetTcpBinding doesnt support message streaming with SessionMode=Required or with Reliable Sessions configured on.
Use MTOM Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism for streaming large files; its more efficient than binary.

CONTRACTS

SERVICE BEHAVIOR ATTRIBUTE
AutomaticSessionShutdown
ConcurrencyMode
ConfigurationName
IncludeExceptionDetailsInFaults
InstanceContextMode (PerSession Default)
Name
Namespace
ReleaseServiceInstanceOnTransactionComplete
TransactionAutoCompleteOnSessionClose
TransactionIsolationLevel
TransactionTimeout
UseSynchronisationContext

OPERATION BEHAVIOR ATTRIBUTE

Impersonation
RelaseInstanceMode
TransactionAutoComplete
TransactionScopeRequired

TRANSACTION FLOW ATTRIBUTE 

Used on an Operation Contract (Allows|Mandatory|NotAllowed)

ORDER BEHAVIOURS ARE EVAL'D

Most specific to most general
Contract, Operation, Endpoint, Service
Reliability should be turned on for Http bindings.

MESSAGE CLASS

A message instance can only be accessed or written to once.
To eliminate duplicate xmlns in Message contracts, embed a datacontract as the sole messageBodyMember and declare the namespace on the datacontract.
To read a message Use CreateBufferedCopy method of the Message class, use CreateMethod of the MessageBuffer class to make a copy.

TOOLS

SvcUtil.exe
Generate a client side proxy from service metadata.
Generate metadata from services
WCFTestClient.exe
Edit Client configuration
Invoke service methods
WSDL.exe
Generate a client side proxy from service metadata.

Which WCF Binding to use

Ever wondered which binding to use and why?  Ever wondered what is the difference between wsHttpBinding and ws2007HttpBinding?

For binding selection generally follow this:

Common Binding Capability Matrix

Name	Transport	Encoding	Interop. With non-.Net	Reliability	Ordered Delivery	Security
BasicHttpBinding	Http/Https	Soap1.1*/Mtom	Yes	No	No	None*, Transport, Message, Mixed
NetTcpBinding	Tcp	Binary	No	Yes (off*)	Yes (on*)	None, Transport*, Message, Mixed
NetNamedPipeBinding	IPC	Binary	No	No (**)	Yes (on*)	None, Transport*
WsHttpBinding	Http/Https	Soap1.2*/Mtom	Yes	Yes (off*)	Yes (on*)	None, Transport, Message*, Mixed
NetMsMqBinding	MsMq	Binary	No	No	No	None, Transport*, Message, Both
webHttpBinding	Http/Https	Xml*/Json	Yes	No	No	None*, Transport, Mixed

* = The Default.
** = NetNamedPipeBinding doesn't support reliability but is classified as inherently reliable because its communicating within the same machine.

Client Credentials Supported with Transport Security

Name	None	Windows	UserName	Certificate
BasicHttpBinding	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes
NetTcpBinding	Yes	Yes*	No	Yes
NetNamedPipeBinding	No	Yes*	No	No
WsHttpBinding	Yes	Yes*	Yes	Yes
NetMsMqBinding	Yes	Yes*	No	Yes
WebHttpBinding	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes

* = The Default.

Client Credentials Supported with Message Security

Name	None	Windows	UserName	Certificate	Issued Token
BasicHttpBinding	No	No	No	Yes*	No
NetTcpBinding	Yes	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes
NetNamedPipeBinding	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
WsHttpBinding	Yes	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes
NetMsMqBinding	Yes	Yes*	Yes	Yes	Yes
WebHttpBinding	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

Standard Behavior Defaults
[ServiceBehavior(
    AutomaticSessionShutdown=true,
    ConcurrencyMode=ConcurrencyMode.Single,
    InstanceContextMode=InstanceContextMode.PerSession,
    IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults=false,
    UseSynchronizationContext=true,
    ValidateMustUnderstand=true)]

[OperationBehavior(
        TransactionAutoComplete=true,
        TransactionScopeRequired=false,
        Impersonation=ImpersonationOption.NotAllowed)]

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms751438.aspx
Of all the settings shown above InstanceContextMode is the most tricky.  Just because it defaults to PerSession, does not mean a session is always present.  If the binding does not support it or the service contract has been configured to not allow it (ServiceContract.SessionMode).

Here's a table showing the resulting instance context mode as a result of binding, service cotract's session mode and service behavior's instance mode.

Binding	Service Behavior Session Mode	Service Contract Context Mode	Resulting Actual Instance Mode
BasicHttp	Allowed or Not Allowed	Per Call or Per Session	PerCall
netTCP and netNamedPipes	Allowed or Required	Per Call	PerCall
netTCP and netNamedPipes	Allowed or Required	Per Session	PerSession
WsHttp (no message security and no reliability)	Allowed or Not Allowed	Per Call or Per Session	PerCall
WsHttp (with message secuity or reliability)	Allowed or Required	Per Session	PerSession
WsHttp (with message security or reliability)	Not Allowed	Per Call or Per Session	PerCall
WebHttpBinding	Allowed or Not Allowed	Per Call or Per Session	PerCall

Invalid configurations are not shown (invalid configurations will throw runtime exceptions such as InvalidOperationException: Contract requires Session, but Binding 'WebHttpBinding' doesn't support it).

Using JSON
I have little experience using JSON with the standard bindings, but my understanding is that you will be forced to use BasicHttpBinding or WebHttpBinding (not WsHttpBinding).  When doing so you will loose most of the support for other WCF features like security, reliability, ordered messages, and transactions.  With regard to security, SSL is supported by both Web and Basic, any other form of security (message and credentials) you'll be forced to hand craft service side extensions to support these.

WTF is Ws2007HttpBinding?
I came across this MSDN article that explains in detail the differences in a capability matrix between the Http bindings and W3C recommendations when to use which one.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms730294.aspx

Simply put, the difference with the newer 2007 Http binding is that is supports extensions to the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS).  This means it supports minor changes to the WS Security standards. There is no real compelling reason for a developer to choose these bindings, there's no amazing new features to take advantage of, merely protocol level changes.  You might choose the 2007 binding if a client insists on a specific standard being used, or you're integrating into existing clients or services that use it.

Further Reading