CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netwcfconcurrency
Mark Vincze
Mark Vincze

Reputation: 8033

Why can this WCF service serve only one request at a time?

I have seen several similar questions, but I couldn't solve this problem based on their answers.

I have the following WCF service for communicating between to apps running on the same server, note that ConcurrencyMode is set to Multiple:

[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.Single, UseSynchronizationContext = false, ConcurrencyMode = ConcurrencyMode.Multiple)]
internal class MyService : ServiceBase, IMyService
{
    ...
}

We have a WPF app in which we create the service instance the following way:

var serv = new MyService();

var servHost = new ServiceHost(serv, new Uri("..."));

servHost.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IMyService), ServiceBase.DefaultInterProcessBinding, string.Empty);

servHost.Open();

Where ServiceBase.DefaultInterProcessBinding is the following:

public static readonly Binding DefaultInterProcessBinding = new NetNamedPipeBinding()
{
    CloseTimeout = TimeSpan.FromHours(1),
    OpenTimeout = TimeSpan.FromHours(1),
    ReceiveTimeout = TimeSpan.MaxValue,
    SendTimeout = TimeSpan.FromHours(1),
    HostNameComparisonMode = HostNameComparisonMode.StrongWildcard,
    MaxBufferSize = 1073741824,
    MaxBufferPoolSize = 524288,
    MaxReceivedMessageSize = 1073741824,
    TransferMode = TransferMode.Buffered,
    ReaderQuotas = new XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas()
    {
            MaxDepth = 32,
            MaxStringContentLength = 8192,
            MaxArrayLength = 16384,
            MaxBytesPerRead = 4096,
            MaxNameTableCharCount = 16384
    }
};

When we send multiple requests in parallel to this service, for some reason it only processes one single request at a time. (It is easy to test deterministically, because we have rather long running requests, so it can be seen very clearly that we call 3 requests in parallel at the client side, and on the server side they are getting processed sequentially one at a time.)

What can be the reason for this? What other config parameters should I check?

(UPDATE: the code I am calling the service from the client is similar to this:

Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
    {
        serviceClient.Foo();
    });
Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
    {
        serviceClient.Bar();
    });
Task.Factory.StartNew(() =>
    {
        serviceClient.Baz();
    });

By debugging I can see, that all three requests are called immediately, but they are processed one at a time on the server.)

UPDATE 2: The problem is probably not on the server, but on the client. If I create a new client object for the calls, then they get processed in parallel properly. I create the client the following way:

var factory = new ChannelFactory<IMyService>(ServiceBase.DefaultInterProcessBinding, new EndpointAddress("..."));

serviceClient = factory.CreateChannel();

Should I configure something else on the factory or the channel?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1530

Answers (1)

Mark Vincze
Mark Vincze

Reputation: 8033

I figured out the problem wasn't on the server, but rather on the client side.

It seems that if you create a channel with a ChannelFactory, you have to explicitly call Open() on it. Otherwise the framework is going to call EnsureOpened() every time you call a request, and EnsureOpened() will block until the previous request is completed, so effectively only one request will be sent at a time.
(Details here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/wenlong/archive/2007/10/26/best-practice-always-open-wcf-client-proxy-explicitly-when-it-is-shared.aspx)

So changing this code

var factory = new ChannelFactory<IMyService>(ServiceBase.DefaultInterProcessBinding, new EndpointAddress("..."));

serviceClient = factory.CreateChannel();

to this:

var factory = new ChannelFactory<IMyService>(ServiceBase.DefaultInterProcessBinding, new EndpointAddress("..."));

serviceClient = factory.CreateChannel();
((IClientChannel)serviceClient).Open();

solved the problem, now the requests are sent properly in parallel.

(By the way I needed quite a lot of googling to find this solution, it's strange to me why this issue isn't advertised more strongly on MSDN.)

Upvotes: 6

Related Questions