Web Service vs WCF Service

Question

What is the difference between them    When would I opt for one over the other

User · Answer

This answer is based on an article that no longer exists:

Summary of article:

"Basically, WCF is a service layer that allows you to build applications that can communicate using a variety of communication mechanisms. With it, you can communicate using Peer to Peer, Named Pipes, Web Services and so on.

You can’t compare them because WCF is a framework for building interoperable applications. If you like, you can think of it as a SOA enabler. What does this mean?

Well, WCF conforms to something known as ABC, where A is the address of the service that you want to communicate with, B stands for the binding and C stands for the contract. This is important because it is possible to change the binding without necessarily changing the code. The contract is much more powerful because it forces the separation of the contract from the implementation. This means that the contract is defined in an interface, and there is a concrete implementation which is bound to by the consumer using the same idea of the contract. The datamodel is abstracted out."

... later ...

"should use WCF when we need to communicate with other communication technologies (e,.g. Peer to Peer, Named Pipes) rather than Web Service"

User · Answer

Web Service  is based on SOAP and return data in XML form  It support only HTTP protocol  It is not open source but can be consumed by any client that understands xml  It can be hosted only on IIS   WCF is also based on SOAP and return data in XML form  It is the evolution of the web service ASMX  and support various protocols like TCP  HTTP  HTTPS  Named Pipes  MSMQ  The main issue with WCF is  its tedious and extensive configuration  It is not open source but can be consumed by any client that understands xml  It can be hosted with in the applicaion or on IIS or using window service

User · Answer

From What s the Difference between WCF and Web Services   WCF is a replacement for all earlier web service technologies from Microsoft  It also does a lot more than what is traditionally considered as  quot web services quot   WCF  quot web services quot  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  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  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  Common scenarios for hosting WCF services are IIS WAS  Self-hosting  Managed Windows Service  The major difference is that Web Services Use XmlSerializer  But WCF Uses DataContractSerializer which is better in performance as compared to XmlSerializer

User · Answer

The major difference is time-out  WCF Service has timed-out when there is no response  but web-service does not have this property

User · Answer

From What s the Difference between WCF and Web Services   WCF is a replacement for all earlier web service technologies from Microsoft  It also does a lot more than what is traditionally considered as  quot web services quot   WCF  quot web services quot  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  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  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  Common scenarios for hosting WCF services are IIS WAS  Self-hosting  Managed Windows Service  The major difference is that Web Services Use XmlSerializer  But WCF Uses DataContractSerializer which is better in performance as compared to XmlSerializer

User · Answer

This answer is based on an article that no longer exists:

Summary of article:

"Basically, WCF is a service layer that allows you to build applications that can communicate using a variety of communication mechanisms. With it, you can communicate using Peer to Peer, Named Pipes, Web Services and so on.

You can’t compare them because WCF is a framework for building interoperable applications. If you like, you can think of it as a SOA enabler. What does this mean?

Well, WCF conforms to something known as ABC, where A is the address of the service that you want to communicate with, B stands for the binding and C stands for the contract. This is important because it is possible to change the binding without necessarily changing the code. The contract is much more powerful because it forces the separation of the contract from the implementation. This means that the contract is defined in an interface, and there is a concrete implementation which is bound to by the consumer using the same idea of the contract. The datamodel is abstracted out."

... later ...

"should use WCF when we need to communicate with other communication technologies (e,.g. Peer to Peer, Named Pipes) rather than Web Service"

User · Answer

Web Service  is based on SOAP and return data in XML form  It support only HTTP protocol  It is not open source but can be consumed by any client that understands xml  It can be hosted only on IIS   WCF is also based on SOAP and return data in XML form  It is the evolution of the web service ASMX  and support various protocols like TCP  HTTP  HTTPS  Named Pipes  MSMQ  The main issue with WCF is  its tedious and extensive configuration  It is not open source but can be consumed by any client that understands xml  It can be hosted with in the applicaion or on IIS or using window service

User · Answer

This answer is based on an article that no longer exists:

Summary of article:

"Basically, WCF is a service layer that allows you to build applications that can communicate using a variety of communication mechanisms. With it, you can communicate using Peer to Peer, Named Pipes, Web Services and so on.

You can’t compare them because WCF is a framework for building interoperable applications. If you like, you can think of it as a SOA enabler. What does this mean?

Well, WCF conforms to something known as ABC, where A is the address of the service that you want to communicate with, B stands for the binding and C stands for the contract. This is important because it is possible to change the binding without necessarily changing the code. The contract is much more powerful because it forces the separation of the contract from the implementation. This means that the contract is defined in an interface, and there is a concrete implementation which is bound to by the consumer using the same idea of the contract. The datamodel is abstracted out."

... later ...

"should use WCF when we need to communicate with other communication technologies (e,.g. Peer to Peer, Named Pipes) rather than Web Service"

User · Answer

Basic and primary difference is  ASP NET web service is designed to exchange SOAP messages over HTTP only while WCF Service can exchange message using any format  SOAP is default  over any transport protocol i e  HTTP  TCP  MSMQ or NamedPipes etc

User · Answer

The major difference is time-out  WCF Service has timed-out when there is no response  but web-service does not have this property

User · Answer

This answer is based on an article that no longer exists:

Summary of article:

"Basically, WCF is a service layer that allows you to build applications that can communicate using a variety of communication mechanisms. With it, you can communicate using Peer to Peer, Named Pipes, Web Services and so on.

You can’t compare them because WCF is a framework for building interoperable applications. If you like, you can think of it as a SOA enabler. What does this mean?

Well, WCF conforms to something known as ABC, where A is the address of the service that you want to communicate with, B stands for the binding and C stands for the contract. This is important because it is possible to change the binding without necessarily changing the code. The contract is much more powerful because it forces the separation of the contract from the implementation. This means that the contract is defined in an interface, and there is a concrete implementation which is bound to by the consumer using the same idea of the contract. The datamodel is abstracted out."

... later ...

"should use WCF when we need to communicate with other communication technologies (e,.g. Peer to Peer, Named Pipes) rather than Web Service"

User · Answer

What is the difference between web service and WCF     Web service use only HTTP protocol while transferring data from one application to other application    But WCF supports more protocols for transporting messages than ASP NET Web services  WCF supports sending messages by using HTTP  as well as the Transmission Control Protocol  TCP   named pipes  and Microsoft Message Queuing  MSMQ    To develop a service in Web Service  we will write the following code   WebService  public class Service   System Web Services WebService      WebMethod    public string Test string strMsg          return strMsg          To develop a service in WCF  we will write the following code   ServiceContract  public interface ITest      OperationContract    string ShowMessage string strMsg     public class Service   ITest     public string ShowMessage string strMsg           return strMsg         Web Service is not architecturally more robust  But  WCF is architecturally  more robust and promotes best practices  Web Services use XmlSerializer but WCF uses DataContractSerializer  Which is  better in performance as compared to XmlSerializer  For internal  behind firewall  service-to-service calls we use the net tcp  binding  which is much faster than SOAP   WCF is 25    50  faster than ASP NET Web Services  and approximately 25   faster than  NET Remoting       When would I opt for one over the other     WCF is used to communicate between other applications which has been developed on other platforms and using other Technology   For example  if  I have to transfer data from  net platform to other application which is running on  other OS  like Unix or Linux  and they are using other transfer protocol  like WAS  or TCP  Then it is only possible to transfer data using WCF  Here is no restriction of platform  transfer protocol of application while transferring the data between one application to other application  Security is very high as compare to web service

User · Answer

What is the difference between web service and WCF     Web service use only HTTP protocol while transferring data from one application to other application    But WCF supports more protocols for transporting messages than ASP NET Web services  WCF supports sending messages by using HTTP  as well as the Transmission Control Protocol  TCP   named pipes  and Microsoft Message Queuing  MSMQ    To develop a service in Web Service  we will write the following code   WebService  public class Service   System Web Services WebService      WebMethod    public string Test string strMsg          return strMsg          To develop a service in WCF  we will write the following code   ServiceContract  public interface ITest      OperationContract    string ShowMessage string strMsg     public class Service   ITest     public string ShowMessage string strMsg           return strMsg         Web Service is not architecturally more robust  But  WCF is architecturally  more robust and promotes best practices  Web Services use XmlSerializer but WCF uses DataContractSerializer  Which is  better in performance as compared to XmlSerializer  For internal  behind firewall  service-to-service calls we use the net tcp  binding  which is much faster than SOAP   WCF is 25    50  faster than ASP NET Web Services  and approximately 25   faster than  NET Remoting       When would I opt for one over the other     WCF is used to communicate between other applications which has been developed on other platforms and using other Technology   For example  if  I have to transfer data from  net platform to other application which is running on  other OS  like Unix or Linux  and they are using other transfer protocol  like WAS  or TCP  Then it is only possible to transfer data using WCF  Here is no restriction of platform  transfer protocol of application while transferring the data between one application to other application  Security is very high as compare to web service

User · Answer

Basic and primary difference is  ASP NET web service is designed to exchange SOAP messages over HTTP only while WCF Service can exchange message using any format  SOAP is default  over any transport protocol i e  HTTP  TCP  MSMQ or NamedPipes etc

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