Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Introduction to WCF

Windows Communication Foundation is a programming platform and runtime system for building, configuring and deploying network-distributed services. It is the latest service oriented technology; Interoperability is the fundamental characteristics of WCF. It is unified programming model provided in .Net Framework 3.0. WCF is a combined features of Web Service, Remoting, MSMQ and COM+. WCF provides a common platform for all .NET communication.

Advantage

   1. WCF is interoperable with other services when compared to .Net Remoting,where the client and service have to be .Net.

   2. WCF services provide better reliability and security in compared to ASMX web services.

   3. In WCF, there is no need to make much change in code for implementing the security model and changing the binding. Small changes in the configuration will make your requirements.

   4. WCF has integrated logging mechanism, changing the configuration file settings will provide this functionality. In other technology developer has to write the code.

Difference between WCF and Web service  

Web service is a part of WCF. WCF offers much more flexibility and portability to develop a service when comparing to web service. Still we are having more advantages over Web service, following table provides detailed difference between them.

WS  

-    It can be hosted in IIS

-    One-way, Request- Response are the different operations supported in web service

-    System.Xml.serialization name space is used for serialization

-    Can be accessed through HTTP, TCP, Custom

WCF 

-    It can be hosted in IIS, windows activation service, Self-hosting, Windows service

-    One-Way, Request-Response, Duplex are different type of operations supported in WCF

-    System.Runtime.Serialization namespace is used for serialization

-    Can be accessed through HTTP, TCP, Named pipes, MSMQ,P2P, Custom