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WCF and it’s Implementation

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is one of the new technologies introduced by Microsoft together with .net framework 3.0.

WCF provides a standard model for developers to build Service Oriented applications. Service Oriented application development usually involved with building distributed systems that divided to multiple parts running in different places. For that specific characteristic, many scenarios of Service Oriented applications arenot easy to be described by object oriented programming models, but by WCF model. It is required that developers change their views on the application architecture.

A WCF application architecture can be divided in to 5 layers:

  • Application Layer: Consist of the main code for all functions of the application.
  • Contracts: Consist of all description and definitions for messages and data that will be used by clients. That includes description of what actions the service can perform, data and message structures will be used in communication.
  • Runtime: Contain all actions or services of the application providing to clients.
  • Messages: Contain details relate to message communications. A WCF application can communicate in different protocols including HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, and MSMQ. The messages can be encoded in different types such as Text, Binary, or Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM).
  • Hosting: Contain details related to hosting a WCF application. WCF application can run in IIS, WAS (Windows Activation Service), host itself in Windows Forms or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications, or be register as windows services and run under Service Control Manager (SCM). The most common and easy way is using IIS because developers don’t have to write extra hosting code and can use IIS built-in functions such as process life time management and automatic restart after configuration change.

With all of its features, WCF is the ideal model for developing service oriented applications that meet requirements of modern Internet technologies.

 

 

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