Debugging a WCF Data Service

Creating a WCF Data Service is really easy thanks to the built-in item template. Unfortunately when something goes wrong, a useless
“The server encountered an error processing the request” message is returned.

There are 2 important settings that help you to return useful error messages.

1. Add a WCF serviceDebug behavior with the IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults property set to true.

This is especially useful when something failes during the WCF request pipeline and the WCF Data Service couldn’t be initialized.

   1:  <system.serviceModel>

   2:  <behaviors>

   3:  <serviceBehaviors>

   4:  <behavior>

   5:  <!-- To receive exception details in faults for debugging purposes, set the value below to true.  Set to false before deployment to avoid disclosing exception information -->

   6:  <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true"/>

   7:  </behavior>

   8:  </serviceBehaviors>

   9:  </behaviors>

  10:  </system.serviceModel>

2. Set UseVerboseErrors to true in the ServiceConfiguration

   1:  public class WcfDataService2 : DataService<DataContext>

   2:      {

   3:  // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies.

   4:  public static void InitializeService(IDataServiceConfiguration config)

   5:          {

   6:              config.UseVerboseErrors = true;

   7:              config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All);

   8:          }

   9:  }