WCF Services - Choosing the appropriate WCF binding

Windows Communication Foundation is a programming model that enables us to develop and then expose our services in a variety of different ways. It means a single WCF service can be exposed with different wire formats and message protocols. Bindings in WCF actually defines that how to communicate with the service. So, binding specifies that what communicate protocol as well as encoding method will be used. Optionally, it can specify other important factors like transactions, reliable sessions and security.

WCF comes with a number of built-in bindings that we can use to expose our service, but WCF is extensible so we can define our own custom bindings to fulfill specific needs.

In this article, we will keep our focus on learning about existing bindings available in WCF.

Various types of WCF bindings

Types of Binding

Let us see more detailed on predefined bindingBasicHttpBinding

• It is suitable for communicating with ASP.NET Web services (ASMX)-based services that comfort with WS-Basic Profile conformant Web services.
• This binding uses HTTP as the transport and text/XML as the default message encoding.
• Security is disabled by default
• This binding does not support WS-* functionalities like WS- Addressing, WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging
• It is fairly weak on interoperability.

 WSHttpBinding

• Defines a secure, reliable, interoperable binding suitable for non-duplex service contracts.
• It offers lot more functionality in the area of interoperability.
• It supports WS-* functionality and distributed transactions with reliable and secure sessions using SOAP security.
• It uses HTTP and HTTPS transport for communication.
• Reliable sessions are disabled by default.

 WSDualHttpBinding

This binding is same as that of WSHttpBinding, except it supports duplex service. Duplex service is a service which uses duplex message pattern, which allows service to communicate with client via callback.

In WSDualHttpBinding reliable sessions are enabled by default. It also supports communication via SOAP intermediaries.

 WSFederationHttpBinding

This binding support federated security. It helps implementing federation which is the ability to flow and share identities across multiple enterprises or trust domains for authentication and authorization. It supports WS-Federation protocol.

NetTcpBinding
This binding provides secure and reliable binding environment for .Net to .Net cross machine communication. By default it creates communication stack using WS-ReliableMessaging protocol for reliability, TCP for message delivery and windows security for message and authentication at run time. It uses TCP protocol and provides support for security, transaction and reliability.

NetNamedPipeBinding
This binding provides secure and reliable binding environment for on-machine cross process communication. It uses NamedPipe protocol and provides full support for SOAP security, transaction and reliability. By default it creates communication stack with WS-ReliableMessaging for reliability, transport security for transfer security, named pipes for message delivery and binary encoding.

 NetMsmqBinding

• This binding provides secure and reliable queued communication for cross-machine environment.
• Queuing is provided by using MSMQ as transport.
• It enables for disconnected operations, failure isolation and load leveling

 NetPeerTcpBinding

• This binding provides secure binding for peer-to-peer environment and network applications.
• It uses TCP protocol for communication
• It provides full support for SOAP security, transaction and reliability.