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Asked: 2026-05-13T01:29:49+00:00

I’ve got a small WCF webservice working with the built-in WCF Service Host and

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I’ve got a small WCF webservice working with the built-in WCF Service Host and with hosting by the Visual Studio 2008 built-in development webserver.

I these hosting enviroments I have relied on the WCF Test Client for invoking the service methods.

Now I am running into problems with my next phase of testing:

I have it hosted in IIS 5.1 on my WinXP dev machine and I think maybe the problem is I cannot continue to use WCF Test Client anymore. Here is what’s happening:

Case 1: “Anonymous Access” is CHECKED (ENABLED)

WCF Test Client UI comes up properly, exposing the WebMethods and the INVOKE button.
Yet when I click INVOKE it fails to connect with a backend data store (a 3rd party product) that requires Windows authentication. I could post the error I get back from the product.DLL but I don’t think it is relevant.

Case 2: “Anonymous Access” is un-CHECKED (DISABLED)

WCF Test Client UI fails to even initialize properly. My researching of this tells me that MEX (WS-Metadata Exchange) requires “Anonymous Access” and (apparently) WCF Test Client requires MEX. Here are key snippets of the error being returned: 

Error: Cannot obtain Metadata from http://localhost/wcfiishost
The remote server returned an error: (401) Unauthorized.HTTP GET Error
URI: http://localhost/wcfiishost    
There was an error downloading 'http://localhost/wcfiishost'.    
The request failed with the error message:
Security settings for this service require 'Anonymous' Authentication but it is not enabled for the IIS application that hosts this service

The are lots of explanations of binding options, message security, etc. and stuff I honestly do not understand. Here is my take on where I am but I would love your opinions:

(a) Because I know my WCF webservice MUST be configured to use Windows Authentication, I conclude I cannot continue to use the WCF Test Client when hosting my service in IIS. That it has effectively outlived it’s usefulness to me. I will just have to take the time to write a web client because WCFTestClient won’t work without Anonymous.

(or)

(b) It is possible to use WCF Test Client if it and the hosted service are configured propertly (I just don’t know what the special configuration techniques are for this).

Which is correct? Time to stop using WCFTestClient or is there a way to have it both ways? Thanks in advance for your advice.

EDIT: 11 June 09

Is there anything else I can provide to help someone else help me on this question?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    When I set the title/subject of this question and reached a dead end here, I opened up the same issue in the MSDN forum with a different emphasis on the title (content of question essentially the same).

    For me, the real issue was how to use WCFTestClient in IIS without Anonymous Authentication being set (because my service needed Integrated Windows Authentication only).

    Mex apparently requires Anonymous and by default WCFTestClient seems to need Mex. The key seems to be accomodating both my doctoring up the web.config file carefully.

    Anyway, I got it working with this web.config below (the MSDN link is here:

    <?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>


                <endpoint address="" 
                        binding="wsHttpBinding"
                        bindingConfiguration="wsBindingConfig"
                        contract="sdkTrimFileServiceWCF.IFileService">

                                 <identity>
                                    <dns value="localhost" />
                                 </identity>
            </endpoint>

            <endpoint address="basic" 
                        binding="basicHttpBinding"
                        bindingConfiguration="bindingConfig" 
                        contract="sdkTrimFileServiceWCF.IFileService" />
        </service>
    </services>

    <bindings>
        <basicHttpBinding>
            <binding name="bindingConfig">
                <security mode="TransportCredentialOnly">
                    <transport clientCredentialType="Windows"/>
                </security>
            </binding>
        </basicHttpBinding>

        <wsHttpBinding>
            <binding name="wsBindingConfig">
                <security mode="Transport">
                    <transport clientCredentialType="Windows"/>
                </security>
            </binding>
        </wsHttpBinding>
    </bindings>


            </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>

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