Introdution to WCF 4.0

This article explains about the new features introduced in WCF 4.0.

.Net framework comes with new features and improved areas of WCF. It was mainly focused on simplifying the developer experience, enabling more communication scenario and providing rich integration with WWF.

The following items specifies the new features of WCF 4.0

Simplified configuration

This new feature shows simplification of WCF configuration section by providing default endpoint, binding and behavior configuration. It is not mandatory to provide endpoint while hosting service. Service will automatically create new endpoint if it does find any endpoint while hosting service. These changes make it possible to host configuration-free services.

Discovery service

There are certain scenario in which endpoint address of the service will be keep on changing. In that kind of scenario, client who consume this service also need to change the endpoint address dynamically to identify the service. This can be achieved using WS-Discovery protocol.

Routing service

This new feature introduces routing service between client and actual business service. This intermediated service Act as broker or gateways to the actual business services and provides features for content based routing, protocol bridging and error handling

REST Service

    There are few features helps while developing RESTful service.

    Automatic help page that describes REST services to consumer

    Support for declarative HTTP catching

Workflow service

  Improves development experience

  Entire service definition can be define in XAML

  Hosting workflow service can be done from .xamlx file, without using .svc file

  Introduce new “Context” bindings like BasicHttpContextBinding, WSHttpContextBinding, or NetTcpContextBinding

   In .Net4.0, WorkflowServiceHost class for hosting workflow services was redesigned and it is available in System.ServiceModel.Activities assembly.

   In .Net3.5, WorkflowServiceHost class is available in System.WorkflowServices assembly

   New messaging activities Send Reply and Receive Reply are added in .Net4.0