Deploying a WCF Service in IIS Without an .svc File

The .svc file is a special content file that IIS uses to recognize a WCF service. It provides

the information that the hosting environment in IIS uses to activate the WCF runtime

and start the service. The .svc file always forms part of the address of a WCF service

hosted by using IIS (this is not the case with other hosting environments).

WCF 4.0 provides a feature called Configuration-Based Activation, with which you can

combine the information normally included in the .svc file directly into the Web.config

file for a WCF service hosted by IIS. To do this, you add a <serviceActivations> section to

the <serviceHostingEnvironment> part of the configuration file and provide values for

the relativeAddress and service elements. The relativeAddress element should be a string

that looks like a filename with the .svc extension, and the service element should specify

the fully qualified type that implements the WCF service. The following code fragment

shows an example that configures the ProductsService WCF service:

<?xml version=”1.0″?>
<configuration>
…
<system.serviceModel>
…
<serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled=”true”>
<serviceActivations>
<add relativeAddress=”NoServiceFile.svc”
service=”Products.ProductsServiceImpl” />
</servicaActivations>
</serviceHostingEnvironment>
</system.serviceModel>
…
</configuration>