WCF service proxy not setting "FieldSpecified" property

It might be a bit unintuitive (and caught me off guard and reeling, too!) - but it's the only proper way to handle elements that might or might not be specified in your XML schema.

And it also might seem counter-intuitive that you have to set the xyzSpecified flag yourself - but ultimately, this gives you more control, and WCF is all about the Four Tenets of SOA of being very explicit and clear about your intentions.

So basically - that's the way it is, get used to it :-) There's no way "past" this behavior - it's the way the WCF system was designed, and for good reason, too.

What you always can do is catch and handle the this.RaisePropertyChanged("EditDate"); event and set the EditDateSpecified flag in an event handler for that event.

try this

[DataMember(IsRequired=true)]
public DateTime EditDate { get; set; }

This should omit the EditDateSpecified property since the field is specified as required