Visual Basic® 2010 Unleashed

Handling Exceptions in WCF

WCF applications can throw communication exceptions that both services and clients need to handle. Typically the most common exception in the WCF development is the System.ServiceModel.FaultException that offers a generic, strongly typed flavor and a nongeneric one. The exception needs to be first handled in the WCF service but the nongeneric implementation is less useful than the generic one because it provides less detailed information. Because of this we now consider how to handle the FaultException(Of T). Replace the ValidateBook method definition in the IBookService interface as follows:

<OperationContract()> <FaultContract(GetType(Book))> Function ValidateBook(ByVal bookToValidate As Book) As String

The FaultContract ...