Basic WIndows Workflows 4 Persistance in a webserver hosted .xamlx services not working

Question

I'm trying to create a Windows Workflow 4 Service hosted in IIS. I've configured the service as below

<system.serviceModel>
    <services>
        <service name="ApprovalService" behaviorConfiguration="ApprovalServiceBehavior">
        </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
        <serviceBehaviors>
            <behavior name="ApprovalServiceBehavior">
                <!-- To avoid disclosing metadata information, set the value below to false and remove the metadata endpoint above before deployment -->
                <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
                <!-- 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 -->
                <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="false" />
                <sqlWorkflowInstanceStore connectionStringName="WorkflowPersistence" />
                <workflowIdle timeToPersist="0" timeToUnload="0:05:0"/>
            </behavior>
        </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <serviceHostingEnvironment multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" />
</system.serviceModel>

The service does not persist! There's nothing magical in the service like custom persisting of values, etc. I've got it working in another service that does have a custom persistance method, but I can't figure out the difference.

Perhaps my service is erroring out, but I can not seem to figure out how to step into debugging either.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Assuming the name of your service element and the SQL connection string are correct you workflow should persist as soon as it goes idle. Did you try adding a Delay activity to ensure it goes idle or a Persist activity to force it to persist?

Try adding tracking or tracing to see what is going on. Something like

<system.diagnostics>
  <sources>
    <source name="System.Activities"
            switchValue="Verbose">
      <listeners>
        <add name="textListener"
             type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener"
             initializeData="MyTraceLog.txt"
             traceOutputOptions="ProcessId, DateTime" />
      </listeners>
    </source>
  </sources>
</system.diagnostics>