Microsoft RFID Provider Error

Few days ago I implemented one DSPI provider. Everything was working fine. Today I came back to my office and tried to deploy some new provider. Unfortunately the deployment of the provider failed with some strange error. After that I tried to redeploy the old working provider. Suddenly, the RFID just didn't want to work.

Following error made me crazy for at least two hours: "This request operation sent to net.tcp://<server_name>:7891/rfid/service/ProviderManager".

So, if you see this error once, the reason is probably not related to BTS RFID. This sounds strange, but it seems that IIS causes this error for different reasons. One of them is MOSS or SharePoint. Unfortunately this was not my problem, because I do not host MOSS at the RFID machine. After hard investigation, I tried any possible trick related to IIS. At the end after nothing helped, I just created the GIF image in the physical folder in which the provider files are stored:

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk RFID\Providers\MyProviderName".

Then I opened Internet Explorer and tried to navigate to image:

"http://localhost/MyProviderNamef0512fee-35ce-492c-9dde-4dbf91c2b301/aaa.gif"

After the image was shown, I was not sure whether I need to cry or just to be more than satisfied J. Following the documentation I tried to open the page "hosting.svc". It just didn't want to work. So, I tried to go to the root. When the "SVC" page should be opened, the IIS is locking for registration of corresponding handler DLL. If your host is running IIS6.0, go to default site, select the tab "Home Directory" and press the button "Application Configuration". After that the list of ISAPI extensions is opened. Navigate to the extension responsible for rendering of SVC-files and you will see that this one does not exist. Usually, at this place following entry should exists: C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll.

Unfortunately this was not the case at my machine. This entry was missing. No wander, why SVC files cannot be opened?! The things look a little different on IIS7. The same information in IIS can be found in the Handler Mappings tab. Select the default web site and double click on "Handler Mappings". Here you should find two entries:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_isapi.dll and System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler, System.ServiceModel.

It is interesting that the aspnet_isapi.dll is a .NET 2.0 assembly. But the solution is to re-install .NET 3.0 J

Recap:

If you get following error ""This request operation sent to net.tcp://<server_name>:7891/rfid/service/ProviderManager", check if aspnet_isapi.dll is properly registered to handle requests to *.SVC files. If this is not the case re-install .NET 3.0."

I'm not sure haw that happened, but I assume that installation of different software at this machine (it was a test machine J) has caused the error.
Hope this help you