WebException or Remote server name could not be resolved in WCF Data Service

Objective

This article will give a brief explanation on how to handle remote server name could not resolved exception in WCF Data Service

If you are new to this topic, please read Introduction to WCF Data service and ODATA  before going through below article.

Let us say, there is a WCF Data Service up and running on a particular server.  We access that using below code at the client side

Program.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.Services.Client;
using ConsoleApplication1.ServiceReference1; 
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{class Program
    {static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            DataServiceContext context = new DataServiceContext(new Uri("http://localhost:61091/WcfDataService1.svc/"));
          
            DataServiceQuery<Employee> query = context.CreateQuery<Employee>("Employees");foreach (Employee e in query)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(e.FirstName);
            }
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}

And output is as below,

Every this is fine till this point.  Now let us go ahead and modify the WCF Data Service URL to a false URL 

And URL, I am giving is false one. Server abc does not exist.  Now after modification code will look like

Program.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.Services.Client;
using ConsoleApplication1.ServiceReference1; 
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{class Program
    {static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            DataServiceContext context = new DataServiceContext(new Uri("http://abc:61091/WcfDataService1.svc/"));
          
            DataServiceQuery<Employee> query = context.CreateQuery<Employee>("Employees");foreach (Employee e in query)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(e.FirstName);
            }
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}

And when you try to run, you will get the run time exception as below, 

Now to handle this exception put the foreach statement in try catch , so no modified code will look like

Program.cs

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Data.Services.Client;
using ConsoleApplication1.ServiceReference1; 
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{class Program
    {static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            
            DataServiceContext context = new DataServiceContext(new Uri("http://abc:61091/WcfDataService1.svc/"));
          
            
            DataServiceQuery<Employee> query = context.CreateQuery<Employee>("Employees");try{foreach (Employee e in query)
                {
                    Console.WriteLine(e.FirstName);
                }
            }catch (Exception ex)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(ex.Message);
            }
            Console.Read();
        }
    }
}

And now running output will be as below, 

that's all. enjoy the bug free coding.