We are in the middle of the development cycle of our new product. When we designed it about a year ago, we chose WCF Services->Silverlight combination. Some of those WCF services are also consumed by WPF, Win Forms and third party Java clients. I have been reading about RIA Services lately.
My questions are
What are the advantages that we get using WCF RIA Services over plain WCF services?
Can a WCF RIA service can be consumed by a Java Client?
Does it make sense some part of the product with plain WCF services and some parts in WCF RIA services?
Are there any issues with configuration of these two parts?
What can WCF RIA buy us over plain WCF services?
Thank you for inputs,
Suresh
Related
What is the specialty of WCF? Does WCF have any relation to HttpWebRequest, WebClient, etc? What is the main functionality of WCF?
If there is a relationship between WCF and HttpWebRequest, how can I use them together?
WCF is meant for designing and deploying distributed applications under service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementation.
WCF is designed using service oriented architecture principles to support distributed computing where services have remote consumers. Clients can consume multiple services; services can be consumed by multiple clients. Services are loosely coupled to each other. Services typically have a WSDL interface (Web Services Description Language) that any WCF client can use to consume the service, regardless of which platform the service is hosted on. WCF implements many advanced Web services (WS) standards such as WS-Addressing, WS-Reliable Messaging and WS-Security. With the release of .NET Framework 4.0, WCF also provides RSS Syndication Services, WS-Discovery, routing and better support for REST services.
WCF is Windows Communication Foundation. It is a framework for composing data-driven services. These could be web services, but they don't have to be.
You're probably best off reading this:
Windows Communication Foundation is...
I am building a new SV application which will be used from the Internet. I am expecting to
have a few users at a time, so I will need good performance.
Which is better to use:
build from 0 WCF RIA services or
use Domain Services?
On WCF RIA I can set up a service behavior for ConcurrencyMode but for Domain Service I couldn't find any info about that.
Also I am a little new to this so be gentle :).
I am new to WCF and Web Services in general. What are the improvements that WCF brings to the table? Can anyone give a side-by-side example of a traditional web service and the same one written using WCF and point out the differences and advantages?
Duplicate question Moving ASP.net webservices to WCF
EDIT: Think i found the answer you where looking for a side-by-side code based comparison and even better it's from MSDN: Comparing ASP.NET Web Services to WCF Based on Development
There are several related questions:
Difference between aspnet web method and wcf webservice
Benfits of using WCF
Moving aspnet web services to wcf
However you asked for a side by side comparison in which case i think Sam's Wcf vs ASMX blog article is more what you are looking for.
Quoting ad-verbatim (let me know if i should just leave it as a link):
WCF vs. ASMX
Protocols Support
WCF
HTTP
TCP
Named pipes
MSMQ
Custom
UDP
ASMX
HTTP only
Hosting
ASMX
Can be hosted only with HttpRuntime on IIS.
WCF
A WCF component can be hosted in any kind of environment in .NET 3.0, such as a console application, Windows application, or IIS.
WCF services are known as 'services' as opposed to web services because you can host services without a web server.
Self-hosting the services gives you the flexibility to use transports other than HTTP.
WCF Backwards Compatibility
The purpose of WCF is to provide a unified programming model for distributed applications.
Backwards compatibility
WCF takes all the capabilities of the existing technology stacks while not relying upon any of them.
Applications built with these earlier technologies will continue to work unchanged on systems with WCF installed.
Existing applications are able to upgrade with WCF
New WCF transacted application will work with existing transaction application built on System.Transactions
WCF & ASMX Integration
WCF can use WS-* or HTTP bindings to communicate with ASMX pages
Limitations of ASMX:
An ASMX page doesn’t tell you how to deliver it over the transports and to use a specific type of security. This is something that WCF enhances quite significantly.
ASMX has a tight coupling with the HTTP runtime and the dependence on IIS to host it. WCF can be hosted by any Windows process that is able to host the .NET Framework 3.0.
ASMX service is instantiated on a per-call basis, while WCF gives you flexibility by providing various instancing options such as Singleton, private session, per call.
ASMX provides the way for interoperability but it does not provide or guarantee end-to-end security or reliable communication.
WCF is far wider in scope than ASP.Net webservices.
WCF can run in any application. APS.Net webservices only run in IIS.
WCF supports models like ReST, Remoting, SOAP, MSMQ etc. ASP.Net only supports SOAP
WCF is more configurable.
WCF supports a more declarative way of programming. You can get more done with less code.
ASP.NET Web Services are pretty much just that. Web Services. They're SOAP/WSDL based and provide their services only to the web.
WCF Services offer a much more flexible framework. For instance, depending on how the service is defined, it can be a Web Service hosted in IIS which serialized its data via XML and uses the REST model...or it can be a Remote Windows Service that is hosted in it's own process and serializes its data via binary. All of this is achieved using the different Service/Data contracts in WCF.
In short...you can make a WCF service look almost identical to a .NET 2.0 Web Service fairly easily but, with a little work, you can do a WHOLE LOT MORE.
We are in the middle of creating an n-tier Silverlight LOB application and are considering the use of .NET RIA Service. We are unclear where this fits in relation to our current WCF service API. Our Current architecture is:
Silverlight <--> WCF Service <--> Business Logic <--> Entity Framework Model <--> Database
Having watched Nikhils Mix 09 presentation it would appear that .NET RIA Services would replace our WCF and BusLog sections:
Silverlight <--> RIA Services <--> EF Model <--> DB
Which is fine, expect that we need to have a standard SOAP endpoint API exposed for use by other applications (Biztalk,Integration etc). Can .NET RIA Services be exposed as SOAP endpoints without the asynchronous requirement?
How easy is it to implement a WCF service over a .NET RIA Service? Do you know any good online examples of this?
Thanks,
Mark
Yes – In the next CTP for RIA Services we will have some very nice support for defining WCF service (via Astoria and eventual vanilla WCF) that exposes your business logic in RIA Services. So you’d have two heads on your RIA Services implementation.
Silverlight <--->
RIA Services <---> EF Model <---> DB
WCF Services <--->
I’d say this model makes sense if the primary goal is the Silverlight application, however if the primary goal is the WCF service, I’d hang with the model you have today.. Does that help?
..brad
We're looking at the exact same scenario. Right now, we're thinking of going with this model:
Silverlight <--> RIA Services <--> WCF Service <--> Business Logic <--> Entity Framework Model <--> Database
We will be able to host our WCF services in a variety of bindings. We'll use an inProc call from RIA to WCF for the Silverlight app. For external consumers of the WCF services, we'll host them with a wsHttp endpoint.
Thus in our scenario we get the best of both. RIA services becomes part a set of presentation services for our app that eases the burden of programming the Silverlight app (i.e. async). The downside is that we've added an extra layer.
Thoughts?
We currently have a Silverlight 2.0 application communicating with a set of WCF web services. These services communicate with other WCF services for business logic.
Client DMZ Intranet
Silverlight -> WCF Web Service Gateway -> WCF Biz service -> DB
The WCF web service gateway resides within the DMZ.
We see that Ria services can replace our WCF web Service gateway, but this means that it will be installed in our DMZ and have access to our database... Is this secure?
We also seem to loose our business logic WCF services... I would need to put the business logic within Ria services (as it has connection to the database and holds the domain...).
What is the recommended patter for Ria services? Where does it fit?
What is the approach for companies that already invested in WCF web services? Can they use RIA?
We are looking at this alternative, were we would expose both web services and Ria...
Silverlight -> WCF web service - > WCF biz service -> DB
-> Ria services -> DB
Any comments? I also wonder if anyone is actually using Ria in production....
Your proposal architecture with the silverlight app calling
both WCF Services and Ria services sounds fair to me.
Suppose your DB has an Employee Entity.
I can get this approach up and running, but have some issues
Suppose "the WCF biz service" accesses and modifies Employee.
does it get this data from the database directly?
(if so, is the EntityFramework edmx model shared between "the WCF biz service" and ria?)
does it in turn uses the RIA layer, and thus the EmployeeRiaProxy?
..?
Suppose you want to use the Employee Entity on your "WCF biz service" operation contract
This should not be possible in a pure SOA architecture?
Use a pure DTO data contract style approach with an EmployeeDto?
Should you use the Employee, or the EmployeeRiaProxy?
Using the Employee is not possible because the silverlight app does not know it
(or would cause another EmployeeWCFProxy type being created on the client)
Using the EmployeeRiaProxy is possible, but ties your operation contract to a
Ria proxy (pretty poor design) and assumes the service uses RIA for data access
Or should everything pass through this RIA layer? from which you call "the WCF biz service" in turn then?
Any opinions welcome!
Koen