Programming WCF Services

Resources and Services

Synchronizing access to the service instance using ConcurrencyMode.Single or an explicit synchronization lock only manages concurrent access to the service instance state itself. It does not provide safe access to the underlying resources the service may be using. These resources must also be thread-safe. For example, consider the application shown in Figure 8-2.

Figure 8-2. Applications must synchronize access to resources

Even though the service instances are thread-safe, the two instances try to concurrently access the same resource (such as a static variable, a helper static class, or a file), and therefore the resource itself must have synchronized access. This is true regardless of the service instancing mode. Even a per-call service could run into the situation shown in Figure 8-2.

Deadlocked Access

The naive solution to providing thread-safe access to resources is providing each resource with its own lock, potentially encapsulating that lock in the resource itself, and asking the resource to lock the lock when accessed and unlock it when the service is done with the resource. The problem with this approach is that it is deadlock-prone. Consider the situation of Figure 8-3.

Figure 8-3. Deadlock over resources access

If the figure, Instance A of the service accesses ...