Jelle Druyts

Just a quick note to mention a little quirk in Internet Information Services (IIS) I discovered recently: when you have a virtual directory name that ends in a registered file extension, you'll get an HTTP 404 error when browsing to that directory.

We were using http://localhost/MyCompany.MyProject.Svc/MyService.asmx as our web service endpoint, but that kept giving us HTTP 404's. At first, we thought it had to do with the dots in the name (causing us to change our guidelines and drop part of our naming consistency) but I later found out it has to do with the .svc file extension being mapped to the ASP.NET isapi dll. So even though it's clearly a directory name and not a file, we still got the 404.

So we changed our guidelines (once more) to MyCompany.MyProject.Svc.WebServices and all was fine again...