Category Archives: Technical Journal

WIF Tracing \ Troubleshooting

I was having some issues today with a WS Federation implementation using a passive STS. I was logging onto the STS but when the browser redirected back to the client after a login, the client rejected the token and redirected me back to the STS again. There was no error message and after searching online… Read More »

Extending WCF with behaviours.

WCF provides the developer with the means of extending the service model through the use of behaviors. The behaviours get defined by four interfaces types.  IServiceBehavior, IEndpointBehavior, IContractBehavior and IOperationBehavior. All of these interfaces follow the same template which allows the developer to inject, alter or validate values before dispatching a call. The order in which the methods are called is Validate, ApplyDispatchBehavior and… Read More »

Creating your own Active STS

The following example uses an active security token service (A-STS) that issues tokens using the WS-Trust standard. The type of STS discussed in this post is called a Active STS OR A-STS, it refers to the client that is actively in control of its own authenticated state. This client will typically have its own login window build into the… Read More »

Version tolerance with WCF

As I stated earlier in a post; “WCF is version tolerant it does not have specific version support. It will adjust the data contracts according to what the client and service is expecting.” The IExtensibleDataObject is the key to have version tolerance. The Microsoft site states the following about this interface. The IExtensibleDataObject interface provides a single… Read More »

Ever heard of the ICommunicationObject Interface?

How do you know if a WCF service is up and running if all you have is the channel and you don’t actually have access to the real proxy? The ICommunicationObject Interface provides you with a solution for this exact problem as it provides the developer with a abstract way to open, close and check the state of connections.