What is WCF?
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework for building service-oriented applications. Using WCF, you can send data as asynchronous messages from one service endpoint to another. A service endpoint can be part of a continuously available service hosted by IIS, or it can be a service hosted in an application. An endpoint can be a client of a service that requests data from a service endpoint. The messages can be as simple as a single character or word sent as XML, or as complex as a stream of binary data. A few sample scenarios include:
- A secure service to process business transactions.
- A service that supplies current data to others, such as a traffic report or other monitoring service.
- A chat service that allows two people to communicate or exchange data in real time.
- A dashboard application that polls one or more services for data and presents it in a logical presentation.
- All communication with a Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service occurs through the endpoints of the service. Endpoints provide clients access to the functionality offered by a WCF service.
- Each endpoint consists of four properties:
- An address that indicates where the endpoint can be found.
- A binding that specifies how a client can communicate with the endpoint.
- A contract that identifies the operations available.
- A set of behaviors that specify local implementation details of the endpoint.
- An address that indicates where the endpoint can be found.
