Why are WCF Service Reference name spaces relative to my WCF client project's default namespace?

Question

I have a WCF service with a namespace called:

MyCompany.MyApplication.Configuration.ConfigurationHelperService

On the client side I have an assembly called which consumes this service:

MyCompany.MyApplication.Core (this is the default namespace)

When I add the service reference, the namespace I'm asked to specify in the Add Service Reference dialogue ends up getting tacked on the end of the client assembly namespace:

MyCompany.MyApplication.Core.MyCompany.MyApplication.Configuration
                                                   .ConfigurationHelperService

Because I'm asked for a namespace at this time it seems natural to specify the name of the remote service namespace. i.e. I'd like to refer to my remote service classes using their namespace MyCompany.MyApplication.Configuration.ConfigurationHelperService because they're technically not part of the client.

My questions are:

• What's the rationale behind this, is this something to do with semantics?
• Should I try to resist changing this behaviour by modifying the client side generated source to get the namespace I want?

I've lived with this for a long time (you have the same problem with ASMX web service clients) but have never seen a written down explanation why Visual Studio (and I guess svcutil.exe) works this way.

Answer 1

Well, I think you have two choices, really:

• if you control both ends of the wire, e.g. you write the server and the client, you could put all the shared items like service contracts, data contracts etc. into a separate assembly and share that between client and server. That way, nothing would be duplicated, and both ends of the communication would refer to the exactly identical items in a given namespace of your choice

• get used to the fact that if you add a WCF service reference in Visual Studio, you're basically getting a whole slew of duplication - because if you're not controlling both ends of the communication, that's really all WCF can go on - the metadata exchanged between service and client (through the WSDL or the MEX endpoint on the service). And since this clearly is part of the client, which is completely separate from the service (all they share, typically, are the wire-formats defined in the XML schema - nothing else), its namespace will also be client-oriented. I think this is a (good) feature, and not something I'd try to combat.....

By default, in a SOA world using WCF, the client and the service are totally independant of one another. There's no "remote object" connection or anything like that between the two: the client proxy has a method call happen, bundles up those parameters passed in plus some information what method on the server to call, and serializes it all up into a serialized message (read: a text / XML message, basically). That message is sent across the wire to the server which then handles that message and returns a response.

So this is not just a .NET function call or something - those two pieces of your system are (by default) absolutely independent of one another. Considering that, to me at least, it makes sense that everything the client does will be placed in the client's namespaces - after all, the server could be something totally different, like Java, PHP, a IBM mainframe - you typically don't have any clue what it is (and don't need to).