Self Hosting a WCF Data Service

I’ve been building Windows Services which host a WCF Web-service to expose legacy data at a local level to external .NET applications.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/writingdata_services/archive/2011/01/24/self-hosting-a-wcf-data-service.aspx explains how to get WCF Data Services, which usually require IIS, running within a self-hosted environment – much like my Windows Service.

Combining that with the Visual Fox Pro Entity Provider means I can remotely access and query ‘ancient’ Dbase/FoxPro/Paradox files (specifically SDCS data files) through a modern RESTful interface!