I’ve been trying to create a stable web service application for the last 2-3 months. about 2 months ago I made the choice to move over to WCF to take advantage of the single instanced web services.
Since making that move I’ve had some real headaches deploying to IIS 6 scenarios. Unfortunately because most real clients still use Windows Server 2003 and IIS 6. I’ve been getting every WCF error you can possibly imagine.
Client patience is wearing thin and soon it will look like we are unable to deliver a reliable solution.
I am almost decided to move back to ASMX services that at least worked, and didn’t suffer from stuff like :
The sequence has been terminated by the remote endpoint. The user specified maximum retry count for a particular message has been exceeded. Because of this the reliable session cannot continue. The reliable session was faulted.
The communication object, System.ServiceModel.Channels.ReplyChannel, cannot be used for communication because it has been Aborted
The list goes on… before I make the move back to ASMX, are there any compelling reasons to stick with WCF, because at this rate we could loose large clients over this technology?
Ok the move back to asmx is done. I must say I am already a lot less stressed out.
First thing I noticed was that the whole setup was a lot less pain free. At one stage I was thinking – “Ok now need to configure the client end”, but then I thought “Hang on – nothing to configure!”
I then had 1 timeout issue, and couldn’t figure out where to set the timeout value in config, then I remembered “Hell its as easy as setting Service.Timeout = -1” in the code.
Long live asmx. You don’t need a Boeing 747 to get you across the park!
Finally disclaimer: I’ve implemented a service that could take anything from 1 hour to 12 hours to run. If I had a service that was pumping out small bits of data to multiple clients at once I think I would have been ok with WCF.