WCF

What is WCF?

WCF is a programming platform introduced by microsoft to create distributed application services. It is a latest service oriented technology which consist combined web service, remoting, msmq and com+.

Advantage of WCF

• Better reliability and security in compared to ASMX web services.
• No need to change too much code to change binding.(change in configuration)
• Integrated logging mechanism. (change in configuration)
• It can be hosted on IIS, WAS, Self hosting, Windows services
• Easy serialization.

What is ABC?

Without ABC there is no WCF. ABC means Address, Binding and Contract.

What are ends, contract, address, and bindings?

• Address: Its define the unique address of services based on transport protocol.
• like:-
• http://localhost:8001
• http://localhost:8001/firstservice
• net.tcp://localhost:8002/firstservice
• net.pipe://localhost/piped
• net.msmq://localhost/firstservice
• Binding:It specify how to define these address based on transport protocols.
• like:-
• Basic binding
• TCP binding
• Peer network binding
• Web Service (WS) binding
• Duplex WS binding
• MSMQ integration binding
• Contract:  In WCF, all services expose contracts. The contract is a platform-neutral and standard way of describing what the service does.
• WCF defines four types of contracts.
• Service contracts: Describe which operations the client can perform on the service.

[ServiceContract]

interface IFirstContract

{

[OperationContract]

string MyAdd( );

}

• Data contracts:

Define which data types are passed to and from the service. WCF defines implicit contracts for built-in types such as int and string, but you can easily define explicit opt-in data contracts for custom types.

[DataContract]

struct Contact

{

[DataMember]

public string FirstName;

[DataMember]

public string LastName;

}