DevForce 2010: Unable to connect to EntityService

Unable to connect to EntityService

Printed From: IdeaBlade
Category: DevForce
Forum Name: DevForce 2010
Forum Discription: For .NET 4.0
URL: http://www.ideablade.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1876
Printed Date: 21-Apr-2026 at 3:49pm

Topic: Unable to connect to EntityService

Posted By: robdrye
Subject: Unable to connect to EntityService
Date Posted: 09-Jun-2010 at 5:19pm

We have not been able to login the EntityManager in our project after upgrading to 6.0.3. When browsing to http://localhost:9009/EntityService.svc - http://localhost:9009/EntityService.svc we encounter the following Exception:

[ServiceActivationException: The service '/EntityService.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information..]

We have confirmed that all IdeaBlade assembly references have CopyLocal set to true in the projects. We have also removed the Silverlight config file and minimized our web.config per the updated requirements:

<ideablade.configuration version="6.00" xmlns="http://schemas.ideablade.com/2010/IdeaBladeConfig">

</ideablade.configuration>

<system.serviceModel>

</system.serviceModel>

Replies:

Posted By: robdrye
Date Posted: 09-Jun-2010 at 7:27pm

After doing some additional research we have narrowed down what seems to be the source of our issue. A component of our application uses a few ActiveReports utilities on the server to generate various file outputs for the users to download. It appears to be specifically these ActiveReports assemblies causing the conflict because after cleaning the solution and removing these assemblies in a test project the EntityService starts up as expected without error. There were no issues caused by referencing these assemblies while utilizing a previous version of DevForce (5.2.6.0). Is there a configuration that can be set to flag assemblies like these to be ignored by the DevForce assembly searching/probing?

Posted By: kimj
Date Posted: 10-Jun-2010 at 8:08am

The EntityService.svc is the first piece of DevForce engaged when a request is made to the BOS. The .svc has to be compiled by ASP.NET before the hosting code for the EntityService runs. Since you're getting a compilation error here with the .svc, no part of DevForce is actually running at this point, so probing changes won't help.

I'd be surprised if the ActiveReports assemblies were the cause of the problem -- more likely the clean was needed because assemblies were out-of-sync, or maybe cached by IIS. If you find that adding the ActiveReports assemblies back into the bin does in fact cause the problem to recur, let us know.

Posted By: robdrye
Date Posted: 10-Jun-2010 at 8:41am

Kim - we have done quite a bit of troubleshooting around this issue this morning and are confident it is directly related to referencing the ActiveReports libraries. The issue is very easy to create:

1. Create a new project using the DevForce Silverlight Application template.
2. Create a domain model in the web project.
3. Instantiate, Connect the Entity Manager in MainPage.xaml - everything works fine.
4. Add references to the ActiveReports library in the web project, try again, and we begin experiencing the issues with EntityService.

5. Clean solution, remove ActiveReports references, rebuild, run and the EntityService starts working as expected again.

I can provide the ActiveReports libraries or an example project if you'd like to test out on your end.

Posted By: kimj
Date Posted: 10-Jun-2010 at 11:03am

Can you post, or email, the debug log? It may have some clues to help diagnose this.

Edit - Oops, I forgot which issue I this was. Since you're getting a compilation error there won't be a debug log. Can you instead navigate via your internet browser to http:/.../EntityService.svc and then post here the contents of that page, which should (hopefully) have more information on the error.

Posted By: robdrye
Date Posted: 10-Jun-2010 at 12:56pm

See stack trace below.

The issue can be recreated very easily by adding references to the ActiveReports assemblies to the Silverlight web project. I can email you the 2 assemblies if you would like to repro.

[ReflectionTypeLoadException: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information.]
   System.Reflection.RuntimeModule.GetTypes(RuntimeModule module) +0
   System.Reflection.RuntimeModule.GetTypes() +4
   System.Reflection.Assembly.GetTypes() +78
   System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.AssemblyCatalog.get_InnerCatalog() +113
   System.ComponentModel.Composition.Hosting.AssemblyCatalog.get_Parts() +7
   IdeaBlade.Core.Composition.PartsCatalog.LoadCatalog() +347
   IdeaBlade.Core.Composition.PartsCatalog..ctor() +37
   IdeaBlade.Core.Composition.CompositionHost..ctor() +140
   IdeaBlade.Core.Composition.CompositionHost.get_Instance() +165
   IdeaBlade.EntityModel.Server.EntityServiceHost.get_ServiceHostEventHandler() +45
   IdeaBlade.EntityModel.Server.EntityServiceHost.OnCreated() +31
   IdeaBlade.EntityModel.Server.EntityServiceHost..ctor(Type serviceType, Uri[] baseAddresses) +50
   IdeaBlade.EntityModel.Server.EntityServiceHostFactory.CreateHostCore(Type serviceType, Uri[] baseAddresses) +53
   IdeaBlade.EntityModel.Server.EntityServiceHostFactory.CreateServiceHost(Type serviceType, Uri[] baseAddresses) +81
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.ServiceHostFactory.CreateServiceHost(String constructorString, Uri[] baseAddresses) +420
   System.ServiceModel.HostingManager.CreateService(String normalizedVirtualPath) +1440
   System.ServiceModel.HostingManager.ActivateService(String normalizedVirtualPath) +44
   System.ServiceModel.HostingManager.EnsureServiceAvailable(String normalizedVirtualPath) +615

[ServiceActivationException: The service '/EntityService.svc' cannot be activated due to an exception during compilation. The exception message is: Unable to load one or more of the requested types. Retrieve the LoaderExceptions property for more information..]
   System.Runtime.AsyncResult.End(IAsyncResult result) +679246
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.End(IAsyncResult result) +190
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HostedHttpRequestAsyncResult.ExecuteSynchronous(HttpApplication context, String routeServiceVirtualPath, Boolean flowContext, Boolean ensureWFService) +234
   System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpModule.ProcessRequest(Object sender, EventArgs e) +355
   System.Web.SyncEventExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +148
   System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +75

Posted By: kimj
Date Posted: 11-Jun-2010 at 9:58am

Yes, it would help if you could send us the assemblies. Email to kimj at ideablade.com.

The error is occurring when building up the MEF catalog - by default this looks at all assemblies in the bin folder. Unfortunately there's currently no way to tell this lookup to exclude certain files.

Until we get this fixed, you may be able to work around the problem by placing the AR assemblies in a subfolder and then tweaking the web.config: adding the folder to the probing path and the assemblies to the list of assemblies:

</assemblies>
</compilation>

Alternately you could do the above with IdeaBlade/application assemblies and modify the MEF search path, but that's slightly more involved. If you want to try this I can supply more information.

Posted By: robdrye
Date Posted: 11-Jun-2010 at 11:36am

Thanks for the confirmation Kim - I have forwarded the two ActiveReports assemblies to your email.

Is this something particular to the ActiveReports libraries or can we expect to potentially run into this issue with other 3rd party components as well?

Posted By: kimj
Date Posted: 14-Jun-2010 at 5:43pm

The specific cause of the failure here is that the ActiveReports assemblies are referencing two additional assemblies which aren't present: ActiveReports.Document and ActiveReports.Chart.

In the next release we will make the code more resilient so that the services still start despite these types of errors. We've also opened a feature request to provide a means of filtering the assemblies probed.

Posted By: robdrye
Date Posted: 22-Jun-2010 at 11:03am

Kim -

Many thanks for your help identifying and explaining this issue. The small subset of Excel-specific AR Reports utilities we have been using did not require the Document or Chart assemblies to be present hence we did not previously include them in our solution. Regardless we would appreciate and make use of the potential feature you mention which would allow for flagging assemblies to be ignored during probing.

Thanks again.