Skip to main content

Understanding various types of WCF bindings

WCF binding is a set of binding elements and each element specify, how the service and client will communicates with each other's. Each binding must have at least one transport element and one message encoding element.

Different types of WCF bindings

WCF has a couple of built in bindings which are designed to fulfill some specific need. You can also define your own custom binding in WCF to fulfill your need. All built in bindings are defined in the System.ServiceModel Namespace. Here is the list of 10 built in bindings in WCF which we commonly used:

  1. Basic binding

    This binding is provided by the BasicHttpBinding class. It is designed to expose a WCF service as an ASMX web service, so that old clients (which are still using ASMX web service) can consume new service. By default, it uses Http protocol for transport and encodes the message in UTF - 8 text for-mat. You can also use Https with this binding.

  2. Web binding

    This binding is provided by the WebHttpBinding class. It is designed to expose WCF services as Http requests by using HTTP-GET, HTTP-POST. It is used with REST based services which may give output as an XML or JSON format. This is very much used with social networks for implementing a syndication feed.

  3. Web Service (WS) binding

    This binding is provided by the WSHttpBinding class. It is like as Basic binding and uses Http or Https protocols for transport. But this is designed to offer various WS - * specifications such as WS – Reliable Messaging, WS - Transactions, WS - Security and so on which are not supported by Basic binding.
       wsHttpBinding= basicHttpBinding + WS-* specification

  4. WS Dual binding

    This binding is provided by the WsDualHttpBinding class. It is like as wsHttpBinding except it sup-ports bi-directional communication means both clients and services can send and receive messages.

  5. TCP binding

    This binding is provided by the NetTcpBinding class. It uses TCP protocol for communication be-tween two machines with in intranet (means same network). It encodes the message in binary format. This is faster and more reliable binding as compared to the Http protocol bindings. It is only used when communication is WCF - to – WCF means both client and service should have WCF.

  6. IPC binding

    This binding is provided by the NetNamedPipeBinding class. It uses named pipe for Communication between two services on the same machine. This is the most secure and fastest binding among all the bindings.

  7. MSMQ binding

    This binding is provided by the NetMsmqBinding class. It uses MSMQ for transport and offers sup-port to disconnected message queued. It provides solutions for disconnected scenarios in which service processes the message at a different time than the client send the messages.

  8. Federated WS binding

    This binding is provided by the WSFederationHttpBinding class. It is a specialized form of WS binding and provides support to federated security.

  9. Peer Network binding

    This binding is provided by the NetPeerTcpBinding class. It uses TCP protocol but uses peer net-working as transport. In this networking each machine (node) acts as a client and a server to the other nodes. This is used in the file sharing systems like torrent.

  10. MSMQ Integration binding

    This binding is provided by the MsmqIntegrationBinding class. This binding offers support to communicate with existing systems that communicate via MSMQ.

Choosing an Appropriate WCF binding

. Depending upon your requirements, you can choose a binding for your service as shown below in the diagram:

WCF bindings comparison

Binding
Protocol/Transport
Message Encoding
Security
Default Session
Transaction
Duplex
BasicHttpBinding
Http, Https
Text
None
No
-
-
WSHttpBinding
Http, Https
Text
Message
Optional
Yes
-
WSDualHttpBinding
Http, Https
Text
Message
Yes
Yes
Yes
NetTcpBinding
TCP
Binary
Transport
Optional
Yes
Yes
NetNamedPipeBinding
Named Pipe
Binary
Transport
Yes
Yes
Yes
NetMsmqBinding
MSMQ
Binary
Transport
Yes
Yes
No
WSFederationHttpBinding
Http, Https
Text
Message
Yes
Yes
No
NetPeerTcpBinding
P2P
Binary
Transport
-
-
Yes
MsmqIntegrationBinding
MSMQ
Not Supported
Transport
Yes
Yes
-
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

gcAllowVeryLargeObjects Element

There are numerous new features coming with .NET 4.5 and here, on this blog, you can find several posts about it. But the feature we are goint to talk about today is very exciting, because we were waiting for it more than 10 years. Since .NET 1.0 the memory limit of .NET object is 2GB. This means you cannot for example create array which contains elements with more than 2GB in total. If try to create such array, you will get the OutOfMemoryException. Let’s see an example how to produce OutOfMemoryException. Before that Open Visual Studio 2012, and create C# Console Application, like picture below. First lets create simple struct with two double members like example below: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 public struct ComplexNumber {      public double Re;      public double Im;      public ComplexNumber( double re, double im)      {          Re=re;          Im=im;      } } As we know this structure consumes about 16
Post a Comment
Read more

Support for debugging lambda expressions with Visual Studio 2015

Anyone who uses LINQ (or lambdas in general) and the debugger will quickly discover the dreaded message “Expression cannot contain lambda expressions”. Lack of lambda support has been a limitation of the Visual Studio Debugger ever since Lambdas were added to C# and Visual Basic.  With visual studio 2015 Microsoft has added support for debugging lambda expressions. Let’s first look at an example, and then I’ll walk you through current limitations. Example To try this yourself, create a new C# Console app with this code: using System.Diagnostics; using System.Linq; class Program { static void Main() { float[] values = Enumerable.Range(0, 100).Select(i => (float)i / 10).ToArray(); Debugger.Break(); } } Then compile, start debugging, and add “values.Where(v => (int)v == 3).ToArray()” in the Watch window. You’ll be happy to see the same as what the screenshot above shows you. I am using Visual Studio 2015 Preview and it has some limitations.
1 comment
Read more

How to allow a very large object in .net application?

Since .NET 1.0 the memory limit of .NET object is 2GB. This means you cannot for example create array which contains elements with more than 2GB in total. If try to create such array, you will get the OutOfMemoryException. Let’s see an example how to produce OutOfMemoryException. Before that Open Visual Studio, and create C# Console Application. Lets create simple struct with two double members like example below: public struct ComplexNumber { public double Re; public double Im; public ComplexNumber(double re, double im) { Re = re; Im = im; } } As we know this structure consumes about 16 bytes of memory. So if we want to create array of this type which consume more than 2GB we need to create array at least with 134217728 instances. So this sample program below creates 130000000 (about 1,97 GB) of array. int maxCount = 130000000; ComplexNumber[] arr = null; try { arr = new ComplexNumber[maxCount]; } catch (Exception ex) { Console.WriteLine(ex.Message); } So if we run t
Post a Comment
Read more