ok, so I've been struggling with XPO over WCF for several days now, and I can't seem to make any progress. I feel pretty new to WCF, even if I have used it in some Projects already. The (my) normal way I'm working with WCF is: Create a Service Library, Hosting-Application or windows Service and a Client. In the Client, i add a Service Reference to let VS automatically create my classes for me in the client to consume the service. Pretty easy so far, and it worked (almost) every time.
After that, I just keep adding more services to the server, update the service reference, and so on.
Now I decided to make more use of my (currently inactive ..) DevExpress subscription and use the XPO's which works like charm for simple applications, but I failed every time trying to use them over wcf until this day and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing wrong;
First, i used the DevExpress OData Service Wizard to create an ORM-Enabled OData Service (selected odata 5.6), designed my entities and that, which worked like charm. Then I added (like mentioned in the comments) simple functions for all my entities, started the service and tried to discover the service endpoint with the Service Reference Browser. At 50% of all tries the browser gave me some error about invalid XML formatting in the response, and the other 50% there were just the interfaces for the collections of my ORM Objects, but no functions at all. (I even added a "public int TestFunc(int arg1, int arg2) { return arg1+arg2; }" there, but it did not show up either)
After several days deleting, creating from scratch, reading and throwing things against my wall... I tried the following example, as it seemed most "up-to-date" for me: http://www.devexpress.com/Support/Center/Example/Details/E4389
But i can't even get this example running right after opening it with the example runner (and fix the reference problem with odata and spatial 5.0/5.6...), it throws an exception about "SetCategoriesFiltering" Resource cannot be found. I did not try to fix it however, I was too frustrated.
So my basic question here is: What am I doing wrong here, is VS2010 (SP1) not able to create/run those type of Service? Is my approach wrong for XPO? No tutorial/demo project worked for me (Except exposing the entire Database as WCF Service, but I don't think this is a good idea.. Or is it the way it has to be done nowadays?)
It is really frustrating to waste so much time without any clue what's going on (or better what's NOT going on...) I know I did not post any example projects or code I've been using, because even the basic example from the developer of the XPO's did not work "out-of-the-box"
I hope someone can help me here, since I really have no idea what I could try next.
My Development machine: Windows 7 Ultimate Visual Studio Professional 2010 with SP1 DevExpress "DXperience" Suite (last Version I have a license for is 13.1.10) All references are good when I open the Example Project, so all OData/EDM Assemblies seem to be available in their proper Versions
- Namikon
It seems that you never worked with WCF Data Services before. They are a bit different from the simple WCF services where you can only expose service operations and nothing more.
The DevExpress OData Service Wizard creates a WCF Data Service. Before adding service operations to the WCF Data Service, I suggest that you learn more about it and decide do you really want to add service operations or use the WCF Data Service, at all.
Besides MSDN Tutorials plenty of articles can be found in internet: