How to check if a web service is up and running without using ping?

Question

How can i check if a method in a web service is working fine or not ? I cannot use ping. I still want to check any kind of method being invoked from the web service by the c

Answer 1

just use try catch inside the method of your webservice and log exceptions to a log file or to the event log. Example:

[OperationContract]
 public bool isGUID(string input)
{
    bool functionReturnValue = false;

    try
    {
        Guid guid;
        functionReturnValue = Guid.TryParse(input, guid);
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        Log.WriteServerErrorLog(ex);
    }

    return functionReturnValue;
}

You don't need to ping the webservice, but instead ping the server with a watchdog service or something. There is no need to "ping" the webservice. I also think you don't need to do this anyway. Either your webservice works or it doesn't because of bad code.