Difference between Web service and WCF

Question

1.00/5 (2 votes)

See more:

.NET3.0

Hi,

I have a small doubt on below point. I come across the below point while while learning WCF Vs Web Service, but am not able to understand how this can be done practically.

(1)Web services are not flexible. Where as WCF services are flexible. If you make a new version of the Service then you need to just expose a new end. Therefore, service are agile and which is a very practical approach looking at the current business trends.

This means Web service can't be updated to newer version(Client can update the webservice right?)

Can anybody explain this with a practical example...

Posted 30-Jun-12 20:19pm

sarath.ms

Updated 30-Jun-12 20:23pm

v3

Add a Solution

1 solution

Add a Solution

Add your solution here

Treat my content as plain text, not as HTML

Preview 0

…

Existing Members

Sign in to your account

...or Join us

Download, Vote, Comment, Publish.

Your Email
Password
Forgot your password?

Your Email
This email is in use. Do you need your password?
Optional Password

I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Please subscribe me to the CodeProject newsletters

When answering a question please:

Read the question carefully.
Understand that English isn't everyone's first language so be lenient of bad spelling and grammar.
If a question is poorly phrased then either ask for clarification, ignore it, or edit the question and fix the problem. Insults are not welcome.
Don't tell someone to read the manual. Chances are they have and don't get it. Provide an answer or move on to the next question.

Let's work to help developers, not make them feel stupid.

This content, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)

Tim Corey · Answer 1 · 2012-07-01T02:56:00

In simplest terms, WCF can do everything Web Services can do and WCF can do even more. Web services are easy to develop, but the only do a limited set of data transports and methods. WCF has a wide range of web standard and .NET-specific transports that can be used in combination. Here is an article that will help you out:

What's the Difference between WCF and Web Services?[^]

Even though Web Services are easier to do, unless you are comfortable locking yourself into one way of doing things, go with WCF. You can still do what the Web Services would have done for you but now you can be more flexible for the future. For example, I recently created a WCF service at work. Right now, all of our clients are using HTTPS to connect to it for testing. However, once we deploy it live, we will use Named Pipes since it is much faster (WCF and the front-end will be on the same server). However, down the road I am planning for us to provide access to the WCF service to mobile clients directly. This would mean adding HTTPS access. To do so, it will simply require us to add info to the config file. A five-minute change will allow us to provide different access to different clients.