Freekshow

The naming of Winfx as .Net framework 3.0 has caused a lot of misunderstanding. Recently I had to link up some WCF services to a .Net 2.0 project. Fine, just upgrade to 3.0 you’d say; 3.0 is only adding some stuff, and not replacing anything in the 2.0 runtime, right? Well, in this case the project had a dependancy on a third party CMS system, and that particular vendor came out with the party line that I’ve seen used more often: we support 2.0, but not 3.0. What this really means is: we’re not up to speed on these new technologies, and we don’t know what 3.0 actually is, but since we’ve not got any experience with it, we can’t say that we support it. Fair enough.
So that left me wondering how to best deploy the WCF services. Of course, I could just use basicHTTPBinding and use plain web service references to generate proxies, but in this case the services had security requirements that are best covered by using certificates. You can configure WCF services with certificates if you use WSHttpBinding, but not when you use BasicHTTPBinding.

One way to solve this would be to use the WSE (Web Service Enhancements) library, but having used WCF I figured I’d try to see what needs to be installed for WCF to function properly without having the 3.0 framework installed. It turned out you can do this relatively easy by distributing the WCF dll’s with the solution.
I added the following dll’s to the solution:

System.Servicemodel.dll
System.Runtime.Serialization.dll
System.Identitymodel.dll
System.Identitymodel.Selectors.dll
SMDiagnostics.dll
Microsoft.Transactions.Bridge.dll

I also had to pull a number of tags that normally sit in the 2.0 Machine.Config file and place them in the web.config file.

<sectionGroup name="system.runtime.serialization" type="System.Runtime.Serialization.Configuration.SerializationSectionGroup, System.Runtime.Serialization, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
   <section name="dataContractSerializer" type="System.Runtime.Serialization.Configuration.DataContractSerializerSection, System.Runtime.Serialization, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
  </sectionGroup>

<sectionGroup name="system.serviceModel" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ServiceModelSectionGroup, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
   <section name="behaviors" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.BehaviorsSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="bindings" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.BindingsSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="client" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ClientSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="comContracts" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ComContractsSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="commonBehaviors" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.CommonBehaviorsSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowDefinition="MachineOnly" allowExeDefinition="MachineOnly"/>
   <section name="diagnostics" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.DiagnosticSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="extensions" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ExtensionsSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="machineSettings" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.MachineSettingsSection, SMDiagnostics, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" allowDefinition="MachineOnly" allowExeDefinition="MachineOnly"/>
   <section name="serviceHostingEnvironment" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ServiceHostingEnvironmentSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="services" type="System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ServicesSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
  </sectionGroup>
  <sectionGroup name="system.serviceModel.activation" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.Configuration.ServiceModelActivationSectionGroup, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089">
   <section name="diagnostics" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.Configuration.DiagnosticSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="net.pipe" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.Configuration.NetPipeSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
   <section name="net.tcp" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.Configuration.NetTcpSection, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>
  </sectionGroup>
and also this bit:

<system.serviceModel>
  <extensions>
  <behaviorExtensions>
  <add name=”persistenceProvider” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.PersistenceProviderElement, System.WorkflowServices, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”workflowRuntime” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.WorkflowRuntimeElement, System.WorkflowServices, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”enableWebScript” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebScriptEnablingElement, System.ServiceModel.Web, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”webHttp” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebHttpElement, System.ServiceModel.Web, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”Microsoft.VisualStudio.Diagnostics.ServiceModelSink.Behavior” type=”Microsoft.VisualStudio.Diagnostics.ServiceModelSink.Behavior, Microsoft.VisualStudio.Diagnostics.ServiceModelSink, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a”/>
  </behaviorExtensions>
  <bindingElementExtensions>
  <add name=”webMessageEncoding” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebMessageEncodingElement, System.ServiceModel.Web, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”context” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.ContextBindingElementExtensionElement, System.WorkflowServices, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  </bindingElementExtensions>
  <bindingExtensions>
  <add name=”wsHttpContextBinding” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.WSHttpContextBindingCollectionElement, System.WorkflowServices, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”netTcpContextBinding” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.NetTcpContextBindingCollectionElement, System.WorkflowServices, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  <add name=”webHttpBinding” type=”System.ServiceModel.Configuration.WebHttpBindingCollectionElement, System.ServiceModel.Web, Version=3.5.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35″/>
  </bindingExtensions>
  </extensions>
</system.serviceModel>

Worked like a charm. One thing to keep in mind with this solution is that these tags are not allowed in but the Machine.Config AND your solutions web/app.config, which means that if you install the 3.0 or 3.5 framework on the server after deployment, you will have to take the tags out again.