BizTalk publish net.tcp WCF service

Question

Is anybody familiar with setting up WCF-nettcp adapters for BTS?

When I create a WCF-netTcp adapter for a Receive location, I am unsure how/when BTS will open up port 808 to listen on the address URI specified. It appears to only happen if I restart the entire BizTalk application. If it closes for some reason, I do not see any way of reconfiguring and reopening the port.

Furthermore, since that is only the net.tcp binding, there is no mex endpoint exposed. I believe client applications that wish to use that exposed WCF service needs mex metadata initially. Accessing that endpoint direct from a Visual Studio project would just yield

Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'net.tcp://biztalkserver/PostReceiveLocation_TCP/PostReceiveService.svc'.
Metadata contains a reference that cannot be resolved: 'net.tcp://biztalkserver/PostReceiveLocation_TCP/PostReceiveService.svc'.
If the service is defined in the current solution, try building the solution and adding the service reference again.

Cannot tell for such how to properly expose a mex endpoint to the service. the BizTalk WCF Service Publishing Wizard is confusing me; I cannot get it to reference the WCF adapter/Receive location I setup. I find no document that teaches what one ought to do for netTcp services; it is all about Http.

Answer 1

Funny, it took the walkthrough about publshing Net-Msmq WCF service to nudge me thinking how the WCF Service Publishing Wizard really works.

The issue is this: When I manually created the WCF-netTcp Receive location, it has its endpoint URI e.g. net.tcp://biztalkserver/PostReceiveLocation_TCP/PostReceiveService.svc. When selecting the option to publish just an mex endpoint in the WCF Service Publishing Wizard, it will eventually ask for the WCF Service Location, which i confused to be the actual service location. Since it would accept nothing but Http URLs, it appeared to only support Http-based WCF endpoints.

But for that textbox, one is supposed to place the Http URL that for just the mex endpoint, not the actual net.tcp WCF endpoint. That is the location in IIS where the wizard will create the necessary meta-data files. Once finished, that location, hosting a mex endpoint will inform clients of the real service located at the net.tcp endpoint.