Discuss about Windows Communication Foundation

Introduction

.NET 4 comes with some compelling new features and welcomed improvements in the area of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). These WCF enhancements focus primarily on simplifying the developer experience, enabling more communication scenarios, and providing rich integration with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) by making "workflow services" a first-class citizen moving forward. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)? WCF is Microsoft's next-generation programming platform and runtime system for building configuring and deploying network-distributed services. The WCF runtime and its System.ServiceModel namespace that represents its primary programming interface is nothing less than the successor and unification of most distributed systems technologies that developers have successfully used to build distributed applications on the Windows platform over the past decade.

The ABC of Windows Communication Foundation : "ABC" is the WCF mantra. "ABC" is the key to understanding how a WCF service endpoint is composed. Think Ernie, Bert, Cookie Monster or Big Bird. Remember "ABC".

• "A" stands for Address: Where is the service?
• "B" stands for Binding: How do I talk to the service?
• "C" stands for Contract: What can the service do for me?

Advantage : Some advantage of a WCF is given below.

• WCF is interoperable with other services when compared to .Net Remoting,where the client and service have to be .Net.
• WCF services provide better reliability and security in compared to ASMX web services.
• 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.
• WCF has integrated logging mechanism, changing the configuration file settings will provide this functionality. In other technology developer has to write the code.