Recently I made the switch from using asmx web services to using wcf services, the transition is nearly finished, but I know I'm in for a lot of error checking and testing to make sure everything ported as expected.
My question is - so far I can only think of 1 good benefit to using wcf, and that is you get an easy way to implement a singleton web service.
Besides that I have to tell you, configuring a WCF Application seems way overly complicated, and I'll forever miss how easy it was to test asmx web services.
What other benefits are there to using WCF over ASMX web services?
more protocol options; ASMX is IIS and HTTP only - WCF gives you HTTP, NetTcp, MSMQ, IPC - you name it
you can write your service once, and expose it on multiple endpoints
self-hosting: you can host your WCF service in a console app, a Winforms app, a WPF app, or let it be handled by IIS/WAS - but you don't have to
a lot more options like reliable sessions, lot more security options
you don't have to deal with as much "plumbing goo" in WCF as you do in ASMX - you can concentrate on your business problem, and let the config and attributes handle all the gooey stuff you don't want to deal with
to name just a few.....
Search Google or Bing for "WCF vs ASMX" and I'm sure you'll find plenty more article, blog posts and comparisons.
ASMX has passed its time - WCF is the present and the future. It can do a lot more - therefore it's a bit more to learn.
But if you check out the right sources, like these two Dotnet Rocks TV shows (Keith Elder Demystifies WCF and Miguel Castro on Extreme WCF), I'm sure you'll get a quick and hopefully painless start into WCF!
Marc
WCF allows you detach service from the physical layout and protocols. For example, you can write one service and deploy it as either REST or SOAP, or whatever that may happen in the future. ASMX is great, but it's pretty much hardcoded to SOAP. Also the idea is that you can plug-in existing features like throttling just by changing preferences, which I haven't seen much benefit of.
Related
I want to create a restful web service that can accept json and returns json responses on a Windows server written in C#.
This particular service will actually have a long running background thread, so a WCF service hosted in IIS won't work (as far as I can tell, IIS will stop and restart the service on/after each request).
In general, I do not really even like WCF since I don't like dealing with generating proxy classes and updating service references down the road.
How can I accomplish this?
Well, with respect to WCF, is a technology already proven to help you build robust services, during your software design process you can design the service to keep state, hosting singleton instance, etc, so your impression of WCF services are somehow incomplete.
Now, regarding the restful approach, the technology used nowadays is called Web API, you can see some examples in the following website : http://www.asp.net/web-api , this will help you to avoid the tipical WSDL and generating proxies that you are talking about, and you can have bare-metal RESTful queries like "(http://myapp/orders/?id=1) that could return a json object with the orderid=1
Here you can have info for the instantiating mode in WCF services: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163590.aspx
hope it helps,
at my workplace we are about to start a big project. My boss (a programmer, this is a startup) wishes to use ASMX webservices for this purpose. I do not want to start off a new program using deprecated technology and would like to show him this. I dislike WCF at this moment because it has such an extreme learning curve, but I'd rather learn it than use an unsupported technology.
The problem I'm having is that I can not find any practical list of cons and downfalls when compared to WCF so that I can convince my boss to not use them. And saying "it's not as powerful" is not an adequate explanation. What exactly can it not do that we may need it to do for a webservice that is not meant to be shared externally? (as in, we don't support third-parties using our webservices unless they are using one of our clients. )
In short:
ASMX is
limited to only HTTP as its transport
limited to only being hosted in IIS (no other alternative)
limited to very simple security
limited to SOAP 1.1
WCF is
more flexible in transports: you can use HTTP, NetTCP, MSMQ, many more
can be hosted in IIS, WAS, or self-hosted in a Windows Service, in a console app, in a Winforms or WPF app
has much more security options
supports a plethora of WS-* standards
can interoperate with SOAP 1.1 and SOAP 1.2
In short: WCF is ASMX done right - much more flexible, much more powerful, much more in every respect.
Here's another quite useful comparison of WCF and ASMX: Comparing ASMX and WCF
and last but not least, WCF is also better in terms of performance, as this quite extensive MSDN article quite nicely shows (including performance numbers and graphs): A Performance Comparison of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) with Existing Distributed Communication Technologies
I've never understood why some people think that WCF is difficult to learn. Try this: create a new WCF Service Project in Visual Studio. Now look at the code. Compare that with the same code you get from creating a new ASMX project. It's not very different.
I have three words for you: WCF. WCF. WCF.
Here are another three about why you should choose WCF: Power. Versatility. Configurability.
ASMX is great if you want to get a quick and dirty web service up and running, although to be honest it only takes maybe a few minutes more to do a WCF one.
The WS-* are really hard to implement with asmx: transactions, reliable messaging, security... etc etc.
And later the bindings: you can change the communication just by configuration, the asmx is just http.
WF exposing services and AppFabric works over wcf.
I would not have doubts, today wcf is the best option for starting a project that needs services.
I need some direction related to this topic; maybe I am missing the obvious.
I dont see a contrast between WCF bound to HTTP and strongly typed web service. Why would this be any different?? I agree there are some development nuances especially related to XmlSerializer in ASMX vs WCF and a plethora of Microsoft jargons. Short of these; i only see parallels
DataContract=WSDL Type
ServiceContract=WSDL (aka service definition)
OperationContract=WebMethod
Operationally, I understand the binding can be numerous with WCF instead of getting locked down to HTTP, which can involve heavy construct and tear down. But for loose coupling it will all be web services.
Are there other operational differences??
Can someone show me the light and put me out of my misery?? :))
Well, if you reduce your discussion to only HTTP, then there's still a slew of advantages that WCF has over ASMX:
more and better security settings (ability to use either transport or message security)
much more flexibility - a lot more can be configured and tweaked in WCF, either in configuration files or code
ASMX web services can only exist inside IIS - IIS is a must-have requirement; you can self-host your WCF services in a console app or Windows NT Service
the clear focus on using Service and Data Contracts in WCF makes for a much cleaner interface and a much better separation of concern (better code, in the end)
support for things like reliable messaging and transaction support (even over HTTP)
In short: even though the differences might be smaller when you restrain WCF to just HTTP, I still think it's superior and if you have the choice to start something new today, by all means, use WCF instead of ASMX!
Rick Strahl puts it very nicely in his blog post:
I would argue that using WCF for any new services is probably a good idea even if you stick with pure HTTP and SOAP because by creating your service with WCF you can decide later on to publish this same service using WAS and also provide the more high performance TCP/IP transport. Or you might be asked to provide some of the advanced features of WS- protocols like transactions, attachments, session management, encryption etc. By using WCF you are building your service with a view to the future so you can easily move up to other protocols-some of which may not even exist today. Certainly new technologies will come along in the future and WCF protects you somewhat through its abstraction layer and common API.*
Marc
Another point for the consumers of the ASMX web service, which ever platforms will consume the web service will have to implement a SOAP stack. If you're goal is for wide reaching consumption, WCF is preferable and will allow you to expose the WS in more universal ways.
The other big distinction between the two technologies is that Microsoft now considers both ASMX web services and XML Serializer to be "legacy technology", and is no longer fixing bugs in them.
It's been a few years since I've done web services. I remember it to be fairly simply to create and consume one. In my current position, I work in a large organization and we use a lot of DB2 stored procedures the mainframe guy write for us to get at HR data.
I'm now starting on a new HR project and rather than having the same ol' data access code that is in most of our other HR apps, I suggested we write a code library DLL that did all this work and just use this DLL in our HR apps from here on out. Once I suggested this, my manager thinks this is a great idea, but he wants it done in web services.
My manager has now tasked me with researching options for securing these web services would be. He wants me to tell him if we should use WCF with this and if the Java developers in the organization will be able to use the web services I create.
I have done quite a few web searches and haven't found information that specifically answers these questions. Is there anyone here with experience in doing this and could answer the qeustions regarding the security, WCF (which I know little about), and interoperability with other platforms (Java)?
Thanks!
WCF is the current approach for building service end points in .NET apps. It's flexible in supporting different transport channels and protocols. You can certainly expose SOAP Web Services from WCF and use them from Java clients or anything else that supports XML.
The old way of doing that in .NET, simple ASMX Web services is deprecated in favor of WCF. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of WCF but it's very simple to use. Personally, I still like it and use it in very simple Web services where WCF is an overkill.
As Mehrdad mentions (and I totally agree), WCF is the current offering my Microsoft for most cases.
ASMX is great and simple - but it's very limited in many ways:
you can only host your web services in IIS
you can only reach your web services over HTTP
security is very limited
WCF remedies this - and offer much more beyond that. You can host your WCF services in IIS - or self-host in a console app or Win NT Service, as need be. You can connect your WCF services using HTTP, TCP/IP, MSMQ, Peer-to-peer protocols, named pipes for on-machine communications and much more.
I'd definitely recommend you check out WCF and give it a spin. It's a tad more complex than ASMX, but it also offer just sooo much more capabilities and choices!
As for resoures: there's the MSDN WCF Developer Center which has everything from beginner's tutorials to articles and sample code.
Also, I would recommend you have a look at the Pluralsight screen casts on WCF - it's an excellent series going from "Creating your first WCF service" and "Creating your first WCF client" all the way to rather advanced topics. Aaron Skonnard very nicely explains everything in 10-15 minutes screencasts - highly recommended!
A .net desktop application will send information to a central server, there will be potentially thousands and thousands of deskop apps sending info to my server(s).
The data will be small in size.
Would .net web services be good for this scenerio or would WCF be better suited?
What are the pros/cons?
I'd go with a WCF REST-based service, because you'll be able to transmit pure data without the overhead of the SOAP header (and other envelope nonsense) that comes with the SOAP-based classic .asmx web service.
the possibilities for throttling, concurrency, etc. are far more developed within wcf.
its a little bit more work in the beginning, but i guess that it's better suited for scenarios where you need to have full control over your bindings.
WCF is a more robust approach to SOA. Microsoft is committed to making it the primary framework for building the next wave of Microsoft business applications. The functionality available already, early in its lifecycle, is superior to plain old web services. It's only going to get better. By going with WCF early, you will be able to ride the wave and take advantage of future new functionality.
In some cases depends on the type and amount of data to send.
WCF will give you more options to tweak your calls.
On the other hand, I can't think of advantages of implementing asp.net web services over WCF. In WCF you could also implement plain 'old' web services
ASMX is like remoting, it's still around because it shipped with 1.0, but you shouldn't use it anymore if you are starting a new project. WCF will give you many more features and better tooling support.