WCF Service FAQs: Part 3

Before reading this article, please go through the following articles:

1. What is a fault contract?

Normally, by default, when some exception occurs at a WCF service level, it will not be exposed as it is to the client. The reason is that the WCF exception is a CLR exception and it doesn't make sense to expose it outside of the CLR because it contains internal details of service code like stack trace. So, WCF handles and returns error details to the client using a Fault Contract.

"So, a fault contract is a contract that contains the details of possible exception(s) that might occur in service code."

[ServiceContract]

public interface IService1

{

[OperationContract]

[FaultContract(typeof(MyFaultDetails))]

int MyOperation1();

}

[DataContract]

public class MyFaultDetails

{

[DataMember]

public string ErrorDetails { get; set; }

}

In the implementing service

public int MyOperation1()

{

Try{

//Do something......

}catch()

{

MyFaultDetails ex = new MyFaultDetails();

ex.ErrorDetails = "Specific error details here.";

throw new FaultException(ex,"Reason: Testing.....");

}

2. A user has a service with a one-way operation that includes a fault contract, and he gets an exception when he tries to host the service. Why?

This is true, because, to return faults, the service requires some form of a two-way communication channel, which is not present in one-way operations.

3. What are the core security concepts supported by WCF?

There are four core security features:

Confidentiality: It's a confirmation about the recipient. Only the valid recipient can read the message when it passed between service and client.
Integrity: Is to ensure that message received is not being tempered or changed during an exchange.
Authentication: Is a way for the parties (sender and receiver) to identify each other.
Authorization: Ensures what actions an authenticated user can perform.

4. Difference between Message Level security and Transport Level security?

Security can be configured at different levels in Windows Communication Foundation; they are:

Transport Level Security
Message Level Security

Details about this topic are already given in the other article "Top 10 WCF Interview Questions".

5. Difference between BasicHttpBinding and WsHttpBinding with respect to security?

Please follow differences between BasicHttpBinding and WsHttpBinding for more detailed discussion, but the basic difference with respect to security is as follows:

As WsHttpBinding supports the advanced WS-* specification, it has a lot more security options available. For example, it provides message-level security i.e. message is not sent in plain text. Also it supports WS-Trust and WS-Secure conversations.
While in the case of BasicHttpBinding, it has fewer security options, or we can say, there is no security provided, by default. At the transport level, it can provide confidentiality through SSL.

6. Please explain about authorization options supported in WCF?

Authorization is a core feature of security in WCF, which supports various authorization types.

Role-based authorization is the most common authorization approach being used. In this approach, an authenticated user has assigned roles and the system checks and verifies that either a specific assigned role can perform the operation requested.

An Identity-based authorization approach basically provides support for identity model features which is considered to be an extension to role-based authorization option. In this approach, the service verifies client claims against authorization policies and accordingly grant or deny access to operation or resource.

The Resource-based authorization approach is a bit different because it's applied on individual resources and secured using Windows Access Control Lists (ACLs).

7. What is Reliable Messaging in WCF?

We know that networks are not perfect enough and might drop signals or in some environments there can be the possibility of some messages being in the wrong order during message exchange.
WCF allows us to ensure the reliability of messaging by implementing the WS-ReliableMessaging protocol. Here is how you can configure reliable messaging in WCF:

<reliableSession

enabled="true"

ordered="true"

inactivityTimeout="00:02:00" />

</binding>

</wsHttpBinding>

</bindings>

8. What are Reliable Sessions in WCF?

Reliable sessions actually ensure that the caller for messages will know about the lost message(s) but it can't guarantee the delivery of message(s).
There is a misconception about reliable sessions that it ensures the session will never expire or stays for a very long time. This we can do using timeout for sessions.

9. Briefly explain WCF RESTfull services?

RESTful services are those which follow the REST (Representational State Transfer) architectural style.

As we know, WCF allows us to make calls and exchange messages using SOAP over a variety of protocols i.e. HTTP, TCP, NamedPipes and MSMQ etc. In a scenario, if we are using SOAP over HTTP, we are just utilizing HTTP as a transport. But Http is much more than just a transport.

So, when we talk about REST architectural style, it dictates that "Instead of using complex mechanisms like CORBA, RPC or SOAP for communication, simply HTTP should be used for making calls".

RESTful architecture use HTTP for all CRUD operations like (Read/CREATE/Update/Delete) using simple HTTP verbs like (GET, POST, PUT, and DELETE). It's simple as well as lightweight.

10. Briefly explain WCF Data Services?

WCF Data services, previously known as ADO.NET data services, are basically based on OData (Open Data Protocol) standard which is a REST (Representational State Transfer) protocol.

According to http://www.odata.org/

The Open Data Protocol (OData) is a Web protocol for querying and updating data that provides a way to unlock your data and free it from silos that exist in applications today. OData does this by applying and building upon Web technologies such as HTTP, Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub) and JSON to provide access to information from a variety of applications, services, and stores. The protocol emerged from experiences implementing AtomPub clients and servers in a variety of products over the past several years. OData is being used to expose and access information from a variety of sources including, but not limited to, relational databases, file systems, content management systems and traditional Web sites.

WCF Service FAQs: Part 3

WCF Service FAQs: Part 1

WCF Service FAQs: Part 2