Difficulty consuming WCF Service in Biztalk using a generic service contract

Hi Everyone

I have created a custom WCF service using the IReplyChannel message exchange pattern, to allow clients talking a proprietory binary protocol to ultimately inject messages into a biztalk orchestraction. I can successfully host my service inside a unit test, which also implements my service contract so that I can test the full loop. Everything works fine.

I am using a generic service contract as follows:

    [ServiceContract]
    public interface ISynapseInboundContract
    {      
        [OperationContract(Action=”*”, IsOneWay=false, ReplyAction=”*”)]
        Message ProcessRequest(Message request);
    }

I am serializing a type, representing the proprietary request, and embedding it inside the body of the incoming request, as follows:
Message requestMessage = Message.CreateMessage(this.MessageVersion, “*”, requestObject);

I have enabled a metadata exchange point as follows:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>
<configuration>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name=”MEX”>
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled=”true” httpGetUrl=”http://127.0.0.1:8003/SynapseInboundService”/&gt;
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <services>
      <service name=”Extensibility.SynapseInboundService” behaviorConfiguration=”MEX”>
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress=”http://127.0.0.1:8003/SynapseInboundService”/&gt;
            <add baseAddress=”synapse.tcp://127.0.0.1:30566″/>           
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
        <endpoint name=”ep1″
            address=”Endpoint”
            binding=”customBinding”
            bindingConfiguration=”SynapseInboundBinding”
            contract=”Extensibility.ISynapseInboundContract” />
        <endpoint name=”ep2″
            address=”mex”
            binding=”mexHttpBinding”
            bindingConfiguration=””
            contract=”IMetadataExchange”/>
      </service>
    </services>
    <bindings>
      <customBinding>
        <binding name=”SynapseInboundBinding”>
          <synapseMessageEncoderElement/>
          <synapseInboundTransportElement/>
        </binding>
      </customBinding>
    </bindings>
    <extensions>
      <bindingElementExtensions>
        <add name=”synapseMessageEncoderElement” type=”Extensibility.SynapseMessageEncoderBindingElementExtension, SynapseMessageEncoderBindingElement”/>
        <add name=”synapseInboundTransportElement” type=”Extensibility.SynapseTransportBindingElementExtension, SynapseTransportBindingElement”/>
      </bindingElementExtensions>
    </extensions>
  </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

When i run/host this service and try and consume if from a biztalk project via Add->Add Generated Items, using the mex endpoint specified above, the wizard completes successfully but the only files that get generated are some *bindinginfo.xml files and an orchestration file. I don’t see any xsd files. I can see that a port type has been added for my service contract ISynapseInboundContract, but it is only one-way despite the fact that my operation returns a response.

In short, I cannot add a port to my orchestration that supports my very simple service contract. I was thinking that maybe the System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message type needs to be decorated with the DataContract attributes so that an xsd is genererated and I can select a message type, when configuring the receive port. I tried choosing System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message as the message type and got an error when I tried to build saying that this type “must be Xml serializable to be a message part type.”

My wsdl, when I point my browser at my MEP, is:

<wsdl:definitions name=”SynapseInboundService” targetNamespace=”http://tempuri.org/”&gt;
    <wsdl:import namespace=”http://www.microsoft.com/biztalk/2006/r2/wcf-adapter&#8221; location=”http://127.0.0.1:8003/SynapseInboundService?wsdl=wsdl0″/&gt;
    <wsdl:types/>
    <wsdl:binding name=”ep1″ type=”i0:ISynapseInboundContract”/>
    <wsdl:service name=”SynapseInboundService”>
        <wsdl:port name=”ep1″ binding=”tns:ep1″>
            <soap12:address location=”synapse.tcp://127.0.0.1:30566/Endpoint”/>
        </wsdl:port>
    </wsdl:service>
</wsdl:definitions>

There is a complete absence of wsdl:types which doesn’t seem right.

Anyway, I would really appreciate any help that can be offered. I am new to WCF and Biztalk, so apologies if some of what I’ve mentioned doesn’t make sense or is complete nonsense 🙂

Regards
Mark