Developing Services for AppFabric Worker Feature (Dublin)

When developing Workflow Services or WCF service which should run in AppFabric Worker Feature (if you are confused read simply “Dublin”), one could ask is possible to develop it without of AppFabric at all. The answer is typical architect answer: “It depends” :).

If you do not use any host specific features in your service the answer is: “Yes, you can.”. To do this you nee VS 2010 and IIS 7.5 (delivered on on Win7 or Win2008 R2) installed.

First create Declarative Workflow Service application as shown at the picture below:

Then go to project settings – > Web and select “Use local IIS Web Server”.

If you try to create Virtual Folder (if UAC is enabled you must start VS with elevated privilege) for application and IIS Metabase and IIS 6.0 configuration compatibility features are not installed following error appears:

To workaround this install required windows features as follows:

Now you can develop you service without AppFabric (“Dublin”). After the service is completed, install it on an existing AppFabric instance.