Transfer large amount of data in WCF service

Question

I have created a web service in WCF which returns more than 54000 data-rows with 10 data in each row. I have used the wsHttpBinding for communication. The service works well with less data (i.e. 2000 rows) but it bombs out when attempting to send large record set with 50000+ rows(~2MB). The exception message is like this

An error occurred while receiving the HTTP response to http://localhost:9002/MyService.svc. This could be due to the service endpoint binding not using the HTTP protocol. This could also be due to an HTTP request context being aborted by the server (possibly due to the service shutting down). See server logs for more details.

Please don't tell me to use pagination on the client side - I know that it will solve the problem. But I need the whole chunk of data in the client-end.

My service configuration on server is as

<system.serviceModel>
  <bindings>
    <wsHttpBinding>
      <binding name="MyWsHttpBinding" />
    </wsHttpBinding>
  </bindings>
  <services>
    <service name="AdminService">
      <endpoint address="AdminSrv"
                binding="wsHttpBinding"
                contract="IAdminService"/>
      <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />
      <host>
        <baseAddresses>
          <add baseAddress="/Bus/IRfotoWCF" />
        </baseAddresses>
      </host>
    </service>
  </services>
  <behaviors>
    <serviceBehaviors>
      <behavior>
        <!-- To avoid disclosing metadata information, 
                  set the value below to false and remove the metadata endpoint above before deployment -->
        <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="True"/>
        <!-- To receive exception details in faults for debugging purposes, 
                  set the value below to true.  Set to false before deployment 
                  to avoid disclosing exception information -->
        <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="True" />
      </behavior>
    </serviceBehaviors>
  </behaviors>
  <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true"></serviceHostingEnvironment>
</system.serviceModel>

My client configuration is as

<system.serviceModel>
  <bindings>
    <basicHttpBinding>
      <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_IAdminService" closeTimeout="00:01:00"
               openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00"
               allowCookies="false" bypassProxyOnLocal="false" hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
               maxBufferSize="65536" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="65536"
               messageEncoding="Text" textEncoding="utf-8" transferMode="Buffered" 
               useDefaultWebProxy="true">
        <readerQuotas maxDepth="32" maxStringContentLength="8192" maxArrayLength="16384" 
                      maxBytesPerRead="4096" maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
        <security mode="None">
          <transport clientCredentialType="None" proxyCredentialType="None" realm="" />
          <message clientCredentialType="UserName" algorithmSuite="Default" />
        </security>
      </binding>
    </basicHttpBinding>
  </bindings>
  <client>
    <endpoint address="http://localhost/TestService/AdminService.svc" 
              binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_IAdminService"
              contract="IAdminService" name="BasicHttpBinding_IAdminService" />
  </client>
</system.serviceModel>

Would someone help me out with excact configuration both in the client and server side. Even if i need to change binding from wsHttpBinding to netTcpBinding - i have no problem doing that. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

After a lot of investigation finnally i got the solution. Actually a number of things need to be changed.

The following changes needed to be done in Server-side.

First I had to set a maxRequestLength to a larger value in my httpRuntime element to run the request for longer period.

<system.web>    
<httpRuntime maxRequestLength="102400" />
</system.web>

Second i introduced netTcpBinding binnding with custom changes on maxBufferSize, maxBufferPoolSize, maxReceivedMessageSize with a large value of 2147483647.

<binding name="myNetTcpBinding" 
maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647" 
maxBufferSize="524288" 
maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">

Third add maxItemsInObjectGraph in both of the serviceBehaviors and endpointBehaviors like bellow (dont forget to mention the behaviour names in the service and endpoint node)

    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>        
        <behavior name="myNetTcpBehaviour">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
          <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="myNetTcpEndPointBehaviour">
          <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647"/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
    </behaviors>

Finally my server configuration looks like this

<system.web>    
    <httpRuntime maxRequestLength="102400" />
</system.web>


  <system.serviceModel>
    <bindings>
      <wsHttpBinding>
        <binding name="MyWsHttpBinding" />
      </wsHttpBinding>
      <netTcpBinding>
        <binding name="myNetTcpBinding"
                 closeTimeout="00:01:00"
                 openTimeout="00:01:00"
                 receiveTimeout="00:10:00"
                 sendTimeout="00:01:00"
                 transactionFlow="false"
                 transferMode="Buffered"
                 transactionProtocol="OleTransactions"
                 hostNameComparisonMode="StrongWildcard"
                 listenBacklog="10"
                 maxBufferPoolSize="2147483647"
                 maxBufferSize="524288"
                 maxConnections="10"
                 maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">
          <readerQuotas maxDepth="32"
                        maxStringContentLength="8192"
                        maxArrayLength="16384"
                        maxBytesPerRead="4096"
                        maxNameTableCharCount="16384" />
          <reliableSession ordered="true"
                           inactivityTimeout="00:10:00"
                           enabled="false" />
          <security mode="Transport">
            <transport clientCredentialType="Windows" protectionLevel="EncryptAndSign" />
          </security>
        </binding>
      </netTcpBinding>
    </bindings>
    <services>
      <service name="AdminService" behaviorConfiguration="myNetTcpBehaviour">
        <endpoint address="AdminSrv" 
                  binding="netTcpBinding" 
                  bindingConfiguration="myNetTcpBinding"
                  contract="IAdminService"
                  behaviorConfiguration="myNetTcpEndPointBehaviour"/>

        <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange" />
        <host>
          <baseAddresses>
            <add baseAddress="/Bus/IRfotoWCF" />
          </baseAddresses>
        </host>
      </service>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>        
        <behavior name="myNetTcpBehaviour">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>
          <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
      <endpointBehaviors>
        <behavior name="myNetTcpEndPointBehaviour">
          <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647"/>
        </behavior>
      </endpointBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true"></serviceHostingEnvironment>
  </system.serviceModel>

Now on the client-side configuratioin you need to change the maxBufferSize="2147483647" maxBufferPoolSize="524288" maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647"

and also you need to add maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647" in endpoint behaviour configuration.

        <endpointBehaviors>
            <behavior name="myEndPointBehavior">
                <dataContractSerializer maxItemsInObjectGraph="2147483647" />
            </behavior>
        </endpointBehaviors>

Now i can transmit 30000 rows within 5.30 min where the query executed for 10 sec so the transmission time is 5.20 min - still a lot.

Feel free to comment and any suggestion for improvement.

Answer 2

If you look at the binding details they do not match entirely on the server and that of the client side. The attributes for maxBufferSize, maxBufferPoolSize, maxReceivedMessageSize are to be defined in the server side as well. And then you need to put the values according to the size you are looking at.