The WCF/WAS Operating Environment

Apart from the database components, the Enterprise Server for .NET components operate as a collection of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services. Some are self-hosted Windows service programs, and others run under Windows Activation Service (WAS).

WCF is a part of the Microsoft .NET Framework. WAS is a mechanism for hosting .NET WCF services under IIS. It provides a ServiceHost and manages AppDomains for the service code.

The components that run as self-hosted services are:

Event Monitor
Communications Listener

The components that run under WAS are:

Dispatcher
Service Execution Processes (SEPs)

Note: Enterprise Server for .NET includes the wassetup command to configure IIS and WAS. You can run this script from a command line after you install the software, or whenever you want to ensure that IIS and WAS are in the correct configuration states.

From the Windows Services display, you can view the status of the Event Monitor and the Listener components, available from the Administrative Services window.

Figure 1. Server EE Listener Service Running Under WCF

Note: You can run all of the Enterprise Server for .NET components in self-hosted mode. To do this, use the command line functionality rather than the user interface to start the component.