I've recently discovered Azure Relay and it seems very powerful. I have a basic project using it now to expose a WCF Windows Service. I've read in the documentation about how it can be used to expose RESTful services, but I'm having trouble understanding if it can be used to expose a SOAP web service. I can't seem to find any examples of that and the closest I can is this post about exposing the WSDL. I have an extremely simple SOAP web service with a single method that takes in 5 strings as arguments. I know WCF Services can be hosted in IIS but my client's requirement is that no firewall ports are opened so here's my actual question:
Is there a way to use a Relay to expose an internal IIS WebService publicly? Is there another method I might have overlooked to get around opening a port in the firewall?
I would be very open to exposing the service I have or rewriting it completely since it's so simple, I'm just not sure what my options are.
You could try to re-implement the service as RESTful service or as a Web API and then use Azure's API Management to expose it to the outer world.
Hope it helps!
Related
We are consuming a WCF service using coldfusion. the wcf service does not expose metadata endpoint instead they share service contracts in dll and svcutil.exe generated proxy class.
Now, how can i consume the wcf service in coldfusion without generating proxy.? i see .net client can access that way by creating channel factory as given in the following url:
http://www.c-sharpcorner.com/UploadFile/dhananjaycoder/accessing-wcf-service-without-creating-proxy/
i researched adobe help page:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/9.0/Developing/WSc3ff6d0ea77859461172e0811cbec22c24-78b4.html
but there is no clue.
what possibilities i have to consume the service?
I don't understand the question. Let me see if I can figure this out:
No proxy would be involved unless you specify one. The client computer will invoke and consume the web service on the server without anything inbetween. It's a standard HTTP call.
You say you are connecting to svcutil.exe, a c# utility. So you seem to mean you have an additional layer between the two CF applications, correct? So svcutil.exe is acting as the "proxy"?
I’m currently working on a web service application project which will run in IIS7 on Windows Server 2008. The web services will be invoked from various clients, from outside the server but also from other components from within the same server. (Other web services and windows services)
My view is that the purpose of web services is to expose functionality so that external clients can invoke it. I really don’t see much sense in a web service invoking another web service on the same server or a windows service invoking a web service on the same server. Please correct me if I’m wrong?
I’ve started looking into WCF, but I’m quite confused.
Would it be more appropriate to do the following?
Instead of a web service project implement a WCF service.
Expose two endpoints:
1)One, which will be exposed using traditional web service binding which will be invoked from external clients.
2)Another endpoint so that internal services, (other web services or windows services) can invoke them, supposingly more effectively, surpassing a security layer as these are aplications already running on the server.
Would my approach be correct or am I overcomplicating things?
Any suggestions or links which could point me in the right direction appreciated.
Thanks
A web service calling another web service?
If they have different responsibilities I think it's a good idea to separate them. You get better separation on concerns (easier to share with other projects / code bases), easier maintainability and independent deployability.
I would go with WCF and have two different endpoints for the different consumers, and for example use net.pipe for communication on the same server (if the client supports it) and http for external clients.
I think WCF gives you more power and flexibility that old xml web services, and the configuration part is really good.
BasicHttpBinding will give you most interoperability with external clients.
named pipes will give you the best efficiency when both services are hosted on same machine.
BasicHttpBinding is like old asmx & XML web services.
Exposing both endpoints is AOK!
One service calling another service is NOT unusual.
Hosting multiple services on same machine is common. In the enterprise, running multiple instances of SQL-Server is commonplace. Of course it depends on hardware, services & response times.
I am developing a smart device application, which is going to communicate with a wcf service over wi-fi. As there is no option to add a service reference into a smart device project I decided to use the NetCFSvcUtil.exe. Everything works great!
But...
In the end I understood that the application must interact with the service in the background.
Having read this article Microsoft .NET Compact Framework Background Processing Techniques. I decided to use the Asynchronous Web Service Call. There http://msdn.microsoft.com/ru-ru/library/aa347733.aspx I found the /async parameter, but it appeared to not work for the NetCFSvcUtil.exe.
What can I do to get the async proxy for my smart device application? Is there a way to generate it or I'm expected to add async methods to the interface with my own hands? Maybe it would be suitable for .Net CF to use SvcUtil.exe to generate the async proxy in my case?
A further more information like which platform you are using to build your Smart phone application would be helpful.
I have done Blackberry development and consumed web services. There are two ways you could build your web services
RestFul Service - Consumption of web services would be pretty easy. Posting data could be a little pain as multipart form data is posted as stream in Wcf - Rest Starter Kit
Soap Service - If you decide to use SOAP, then for blackberry and Android you have to use preverified KSOAP -2 to send and receive soap messages between your app and the web service. If you decide to use KSOAP -2 , go back ASMX services. Somehow WCF services does not communicate with KSOAP -2 (due to change in SOAP version or something) where as a simple ASMX service works pretty smoothly. There are dozens of article which you could use to learn how to use KSOAP
he original idea was to host it in a windows service...
Windows Services could never be web facing. If you want any thing to be web facing, you need a Web Server !
In the end it worked. The "Add web reference" tool created a proxy with Begin/End async methods and the proxy interacted with the wcf service hosted by a simple console application (later a windows service) through the URL property of the proxy.
I know that you can create web services in .net and have them run on iis. I'd like to make something that doesn't rely on iis as the webserver I'm using runs apache.
The eventual app should listen for incoming xml documents and repy in the form of an xml document, the client application will be running Javascript and sending xmls via http post requests. Is this something that SOAP handles?
All the guides and tutorials seem to follow the microsoft way, all hosted on servers running iis... is there a way around this?
As you can tell I'm quite confused as how to start.
I would strongly advise against implementing your own web service hosting platform - this really isn't a trivial thing to implement, especially if you want to be passing proper web service messages between your servers.
One option that would allow you to utilize WCF and Microsoft's baked in web service functionality is hosting WCF as a standalone service. In this model, you aren't using IIS to host the web service - you trade off some monitoring and logging functionality baked into IIS but it doesn't require IIS be installed.
Here's an article on WCF hosting options - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb332338.aspx
I see that there are two options that I know can be used in web services... WCF obviously, and ASP.NET Web Services. What's the difference? I just started picking up WCF recently and had a little exposure to web services in the past, but I'm certainly not an expert.
it is quite easy to know the differences.
ASP.NET Web Method is called ASMX [because of the file extension] (check 4GuysFromRolla about this, they have a good tutorial)
This technology makes you expose methods as a Web Service so you can connect it (to the WS) from everywhere and use it (the methods). But... you can't protect the data between server and client, like, you can send big files in a clear mode, etc...
[Note] you can protect the access to the web service using certificates, but it is a pain and quite complicated, normally in ASMX we use username / passsword to give access to a method (once again... in plain text!)
In WCF, you are in the different world about Web Services, and this is the best technology in .NET (so far) to expose Services (can you see the difference... Services! not Web Services), WCF does not need IIS to run, it can run as a System Service on the server, using a console ambient (like command line), in TCP/IP mode, etc, so we say that WCF is a Service, not a Web Service. Remember ASMX need IIS to run and will only run hosted in a Web Server.
With WCF you can use SSL to encrypt the communication (to do that in ASMX you need to use WSE - Web Services Enhancements) and it is quite easy to implement it, you can send big files and securely (to do that in ASMX you need to use MTOM - Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism).
you can set the transmission preferences just changing one line of code, or even, if you prefer, change the XML configuration file, the security is much higher, etc, etc :)
hope you get a better general overview with this, but there is much more.
bottom line: to expose Web Services that you do not need to protect, you can use ASMX, no problem at all, but if you need to protect the communication somehow, do it in WCF!
link: you can read here some performance comparative between the 2 services
ASP.NET web services was Microsoft's first attempt at web services.
WCF replaces ASP.NET web servies and .NET remoting. WCF provides a common programming model that enables you to do what the two older technologies where capable of and much more including support for a wide range of protocols and security models.
Go with WCF if you have the choice.
ASP.NET webservices is OKAY - but it's limited to HTTP hosted in IIS only, and has other problems.
WCF supports way more transport protocols (HTTP in various ways, TCP, MSMQ and more), has a lot richer security model (credentials, federated security), and offer options for hosting - self-hosting in a Windows app or service, in IIS or WAS and more.
In short: if you're starting now - go learn WCF by all means !
Marc