An interesting tidbit from the readme file

I like to read the readme files. There's often juicy little tidbits of info in there that won't show up by searching the BOL (that's why there's a readme in the first place). In SQL Server 2005 there 3 “readme” files: requirements, readme, and “addendum to the readme” (available on web via a link in the readme). In the requirements file (ok, so I'm not done yet), this caught my eye:

“Native Web Service (SOAP/HTTP) support is only available for instances of SQL Server 2005 running on Windows 2003”

Reason this interested me is that, AFAIK, the technical requirement for HTTP in SQL Server 2005 is an OS that supports HTTP.sys, that is the kernel-mode HTTP stack. But Windows XPSP2 supports this too. During the beta, it was listed as OK, and the devs even answered newsgroup questions on problems with that configuration.

So I deduce what this means is, although SOAP/HTTP would technically work on XPSP2, its not officially supported, i.e. don't call tech support with your problems when using this configuration.

Or am I reading too much into one sentence in a readme file?

6 thoughts on “An interesting tidbit from the readme file

  1. One thing that I noticed in Beta 2 was that there were problems (at least on my machine) publishing a HTTP/SOAP Endpoint on ports other than 80. I think it was just a problem with the WSDL generator, though.

    But, if you are not able to use a port other than 80, and you are also running IIS on XP, then you will not be able to create the endpoint without stopping IIS 5.1, since it does not use the HTTP.SYS driver.

    I can confirm that I was able to get an endpoint working on XP SP2 with the RTM of SQL Server. I did have to do some different things in my script (that worked flawlessly in Beta 2).

    For one, SITE = ‘*’ did not work for me, but SITE = ‘localhost’ did.

    I also executed the following (don’t know if it was necessary or not):

    sp_reserve_http_namespace N’http://localhost:80/ThePathHere’

  2. Hi Bob,

    Yep, that’s intriguing as it was working on XP SP2, given it also had the kernel-mode http.sys driver. Wonder why they’re not keen????

    Regards,

    Greg

  3. Hi Jason,

    sp_reserve_http_namespace is required before running CREATE ENDPOINT if your SQL Server service account is not a local machine admin. Mine isn’t, I always run it. If your service account is a local admin, CREATE ENDPOINT actually reserves it.

    If you use SITE=’*’, you use sp_reserve_http_namespace N’http://*:80/ThePathHere’ this has always worked for me. There were a few problems with the VS and .NET WSDL generator and endpoints throughout the beta. I’d check it again, now that RTM is out.

    Cheers.

  4. Bob:

    Nifty about the reserve ‘*:80’ ! I had only discovered the sp_reserve_http_namespace this morning while trying to get my endpoint creation to work–I used localhost, but didn’t think to try *.

    I, too, am still confused as to why they don’t include XP SP2 in the list of supported configurations. The only thing that I can still come up with is the fact that IIS 5.1 does not use http.sys, and they don’t want to handle support calls with people wanting to run IIS and publish SQL Endpoints on port 80 at the same time.

  5. As a followup, I asked a couple different members of the product team about this specific issue, and they felt that this is a typo/ommission from the readme, not the product. They were unaware of any change that would result in XP SP2 not being supported.

  6. Thanks, Jason. It would have to be a typo rather than an ommision, as this limitation is specifically called out in the README. Good, I’ll go on the premise that the configuration is entirely supported.

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