What are the cons of a web api versus a WCF service?

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I can't think of many at all, except that a WCF service is more complex, and thus risky, and you have to manage your own hosting, where IIS is designed to host, and has years more in the field than WCF.

My client wanted to use WCF as a web service for his users, people on laptops, to perform basic auth, and then CRUD operations regarding appointments for a given day. I m much more in favour of a Web Api, with built in auth, basically built in everything you need except the CRUD code itself.

Other aspects of the spec convince me he is yet another BA with very little exposure to real life software development.

What I have tried:

Knowing a Web API would be far simpler and safer, having implemented both for the same product before.

Posted 17-Oct-16 17:37pm

Brady Kelly

Updated 19-Oct-16 1:26am

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Harpreet05Kaur · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-19T01:26:00

Solution 1

HI,

Please refer to the following link, It will tell:
1. Difference between them.
2. Situations when to use wcf and when to use web api.

Both technologies are from MS and are meant for different situations as per requirement :

c# - Whats the difference between WCF Web API and ASP.NET Web API - Stack Overflow[^]

also both have pros and cons, Its upto the requirement which one is reliable on the other.

Posted 19-Oct-16 1:26am

Harpreet05Kaur

Updated 19-Oct-16 1:27am

v2

Comments

Brady Kelly 19-Oct-16 8:17am

Thanks. It's overwhelming professional opinion that MVC is really only a niche for highly specialised applications, using binary data transfer. SOAP is dead.

Harpreet05Kaur 19-Oct-16 8:32am

Your Welcome Brady Kelly.