What are the differences between WCF and ASMX web services

Question

I am totally confused between WCF and ASMX web services   I have used a lot of web services in my earlier stage  and now there is this new thing introduced called WCF   I can still create WCF that function as a web service   I think there will be more stuff in WCF     What are the differences between WCF and Web services  When should each one be used

User · Accepted Answer

Keith Elder nicely compares ASMX to WCF here. Check it out.

Another comparison of ASMX and WCF can be found here - I don't 100% agree with all the points there, but it might give you an idea.

WCF is basically "ASMX on stereoids" - it can be all that ASMX could - plus a lot more!.

ASMX is:

easy and simple to write and configure
only available in IIS
only callable from HTTP

WCF can be:

hosted in IIS, a Windows Service, a Winforms application, a console app - you have total freedom
used with HTTP (REST and SOAP), TCP/IP, MSMQ and many more protocols

In short: WCF is here to replace ASMX fully.

Check out the WCF Developer Center on MSDN.

Update: link seems to be dead - try this: What Is Windows Communication Foundation?

User · Answer

This is a very old question  but I do not feel that the benefits of ASMX have been fairly portrayed  While not terribly flexible  ASMX web services are very simple to use and understand  While WCF is more flexible  it is also more complex to stand up and configure   ASMX web services are ready to stand up and add as a webservice reference as soon as you add the file   assuming your project builds   For the simple development workflow of  create webservice -  run webservice -  add webservice reference  an ASMX webservice has very little that can go wrong  not much that you can misconfigure  and that is it s strength   In response to those that assert that WCF replaces ASMX  I would reply that WCF would need to add a streamlined K I S S  configuration mode in order to completely replace ASMX   Example web config for an ASMX webservice    lt  xml version  1 0  encoding  utf-8   gt   lt configuration gt     lt appSettings   gt     lt system web gt       lt compilation targetFramework  4 5    gt       lt httpRuntime targetFramework  4 5    gt     lt  system web gt   lt  configuration gt

User · Answer

WCF completely replaces ASMX web services  ASMX is the old way to do web services and WCF is the current way to do web services  All new SOAP web service development  on the client or the server  should be done using WCF

User · Answer

There s a lot of talks going on regarding the simplicity of asmx web services over WCF  Let me clarify few points here    Its true that novice web service developers will get started easily in asmx web services  Visual Studio does all the work for them and readily creates a Hello World project  But if you can learn WCF  which off course wont take much time  then you can get to see that WCF is also quite simple  and you can go ahead easily  Its important to remember that these said complexities in WCF are actually attributed to the beautiful features that it brings along with it  There are addressing  bindings  contracts and endpoints  services  amp  clients all mentioned in the config file  The beauty is your business logic is segregated and maintained safely  Tomorrow if you need to change the binding from basicHttpBinding to netTcpBinding you can easily create a binding in config file and use it  So all the changes related to clients  communication channels  bindings etc are to be done in the configuration  leaving the business logic safe  amp  intact  which makes real good sense  WCF  web services  are part of a much broader spectrum of remote communication enabled through WCF  You will get a much higher degree of flexibility and portability doing things in WCF than through traditional ASMX because WCF is designed  from the ground up  to summarize all of the different distributed programming infrastructures offered by Microsoft  An endpoint in WCF can be communicated with just as easily over SOAP XML as it can over TCP binary and to change this medium is simply a configuration file mod  In theory  this reduces the amount of new code needed when porting or changing business needs  targets  etc  Web Services can be accessed only over HTTP  amp  it works in stateless environment  where WCF is flexible because its services can be hosted in different types of applications  You can host your WCF services in Console  Windows Services  IIS  amp  WAS  which are again different ways of creating new projects in Visual Studio  ASMX is older than WCF  and anything ASMX can do so can WCF  and more   Basically you can see WCF as trying to logically group together all the different ways of getting two apps to communicate in the world of Microsoft  ASMX was just one of these many ways and so is now grouped under the WCF umbrella of capabilities  You will always like to use Visual Studio for NET 4 0 or 4 5 as it makes life easy while creating WCF services  The major difference is that Web Services Use XmlSerializer  But WCF Uses DataContractSerializer which is better in Performance as compared to XmlSerializer  That s why WCF performs way better than other communication technology counterparts from  NET like asmx   NET remoting etc    Not to forget that I was one of those guys who liked asmx services more than WCF  but that time I was not well aware of WCF services and its capabilities  I was scared of the WCF configurations  But I dared and and tried writing few WCF services of my own  and when I learnt more of WCF  now I have no inhibitions about WCF and I recommend them to anyone  amp  everyone  Happy coding

User · Answer

ASMX Web services can only be invoked by HTTP  traditional webservice with  asmx   While WCF Service or a WCF component can be invoked by any protocol  like http  tcp etc   and any transport type   Second  ASMX web services are not flexible  However  WCF Services are flexible  If you make a new version of the service then you need to just expose a new end  Therefore  services are agile and which is a very practical approach looking at the current business trends   We develop WCF as contracts  interface  operations  and data contracts  As the developer we are more focused on the business logic services and need not worry about channel stack  WCF is a unified programming API for any kind of services so we create the service and use configuration information to set up the communication mechanism like HTTP TCP MSMQ etc

[wcf] What are the differences between WCF and ASMX web services?

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