Ouch, it looks like Jef ran headlong into a bit of a brick wall using the Web programming model inside of ASP.NET. 

That one's my fault for not getting the time to write an ASP.NET sample before the SDK shipped. Had I done that, I could have saved Jef some pain and a long blog post.

So Jef, I apologize. I owe you a beer next time I see you. Let me try to make it up to you.

The basic gist of Jef's post is that "there's too much *@#%!^ config required to use your stuff!". I agree. That's why we added two types to the Web programming model for making this easier -- System.ServiceModel.Web.WebServiceHost and System.ServiceModel.Web.WebServiceHostFactory. Both of these guys ship in the BizTalk Services SDK.

I like to think of them as the 'do the right thing' service host for Web-style services. Absent any configuration, they will auto-configure a default Web endpoint at the service's base address. The WebServiceHostFactory knows about IIS metabase settings so it can properly configure the endpoint's binding for HTTPS. It will also add the WebHttpBehavior to the endpoint to enable web-style dispatching.

Net/net, all you have to do to use the Web programming model in ASP.NET is to create a web site project that references the Microsoft.ServiceModel.Web assembly. Once you've done that, you can write the service in one file (e.g. Service.svc):

<% @ServiceHost Factory="System.ServiceModel.Web.WebServiceHostFactory"Service="Service" Language="C#" %>using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.ServiceModel;using System.ServiceModel.Description;using System.ServiceModel.Web;using System.Text;[ServiceContract]public class Service{//you can hit this at http://<app>/Service.svc/EchoWithGet?s=hello, world[OperationContract][WebGet()]public string EchoWithGet(string s){return "In EchoWithGet: You said " + s;}}

Note the Factory attribute in the @ServiceHost directive. That's the key to the whole thing. Once you have that, you don't need any service or endpoint config. The only thing you need in web.config is the reference to Microsoft.ServiceModel.Web.

Hope that helps with keeping simple things simple.

Note: in the SDK build, we're a bit aggressive about requiring a trailing slash in some cases (particularly if you have UriTemplate="" or UriTemplate="*"). That will be much more usable by RTM, but for now just a heads up.