Programming WCF Services, 3rd Edition

Behaviors

By and large, the service instance mode is strictly a service-side implementation detail that should not manifest itself on the client side in any way. To support that and a few other local service-side aspects, WCF defines the notion of behaviors. A behavior is a local attribute of the service or the client that does not affect its communication patterns. Clients should be unaware of service behaviors, and behaviors do not manifest themselves in the service’s binding or published metadata. You have already seen two service behaviors in the previous chapters: Chapter 1 uses the service metadata behavior to instruct the host to publish the service’s metadata over HTTP-GET or to implement the MEX endpoint, and Chapter 3 uses the service behavior to ignore the data object extension. No client can ever tell simply by examining the communication and the exchanged messages if the service is ignoring the data object extension or who published its metadata.

WCF defines two types of declarative service-side behaviors, governed by two corresponding attributes. The ServiceBehaviorAttribute is used to configure service behaviors; that is, behaviors that affect all endpoints (all contracts and operations) of the service. Apply the ServiceBehavior attribute directly on the service implementation class.

Use the OperationBehaviorAttribute to configure operation behaviors; that is, behaviors that affect only the implementation of a particular operation. The OperationBehavior attribute can ...