THINK

When using WCF + Windows Service + net.Tcp binding, ServiceBehavior > ServiceMeta > HttpGet must be set to false. It normally defaults to true when first created in WCF Configuration Editor. The fastest way to get rid of it is to edit the App.config XML directly, deleting the related <serviceMeta> tag.

If an application or DLL is compiled to in a .NET runtime vresion and references another DLL which is in another .NET runtime version, then it may cause an exception stating that the application is unabled to load DLL in mixed runtime mode.

The solution is to have an app.config file (athough I think there must also be a way without it) in the same directory as the executable and have this lines in it under in the XML hierarchy:

<configuration>
    <startup useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy="true">
        <supportedRuntime version="v4.0" sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.0"/>
    </startup>
...

The key here is “useLegacyV2RuntimeActivationPolicy”. Look up the latest values to suit your runtime versions.

Just a stub

Creating Service Contract
Creating DataContract
Creating FaultContract

Creating Windows Service Host
Creating Proxy
Creating Client

Creating app.config with WCF config Editor in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
Installing/Uninstalling/Starting/Stopping Windows Service Host with sc.exe
Use client to connect proxy to host, and consuming services.

Programatically configure service and proxy using and without using app.config

Concepts beyond: Port sharing, IIS hosting, behaviors, tracing, message logging, using MSVS tools to do Metadata extraction.

Just a stub:

Service
Host
Endpoint
Binding
Metadata
Behavior
Protocol

Tracing
Message
Fault

Proxy
Client

Just a stub first:

WCF is Windows Communications Foundation
By default, it sends message using SOAP protocol by serializing data structures into XML.
For serialization, it specifies the DataContract and DataMember attributes.
For Interface programming, it specifies the ServiceContract and OperationContract attributes.
For Error and Exception handling, it specifies the FaultContract attribute.

Language agnostic (the only thing fixed is SOAP) such that JAVA or other apps can consume the services.
Hide implementation and expose only interface specific faults (as oppoosed to Exceptions)

A WCF service is typically compiled as an independant DLL that can be hosted by one of several methods i.e. IIS, Windows Service or Self-hosted e.g. in a WinForms application, WPF application.

The Microsoft .NET 4.0 framework with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 provide some magic code and convenient designer UI to build both the WCF service and the client.

From the Microsoft Sync Framework 2.1 SDK download page http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=23217

in the last part where it says instructions:

It is not possible have full 32-bit Sync Framework 2.1 SDK installed side-by-side with the 64-bit SDK; therefore you will have to install one version of SDK (64-bit) completely and only selected components of other version (32-bit) of SDK. See Sync Framework Tips and Troubleshooting topic for details.

But that statement isn’t totally clear: The way to install for 64bit development machine is to download the x64 for the SDK and the fill the x86 parts with the redistributables from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=19502

It works for me at least. Hope it helps.

Unrelated tidbit: I broke the Microsoft Forums layout when I posted this as a reply to http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en/syncdevdiscussions/thread/34a04f62-014a-48a0-9397-256b6ad1387b

Check this out: