Difference between WCF and Webservice in asp.net

Difference between WCF and Webservice in asp.net

-Webservices can be accessed only over HTTP and it works in stateless environment, WCF Service support  HTTP, TCP, IPC, and even Message Queues for communication.

- WCF is flexible because because its services can be hosted in different types of application like [IIS,WAS,Self-hosting and Managed Windows service]

- Webservices use XmlSerializer, But WCF uses DataContractSerializer, and it is good performance compare with XmlSerializer.

- DataContractSerializer can translate the HashTable into XML

- In webservice Only Public fields or Properties of .NET types can be translated into XML
- ASP.NET web services are compiled into a class library assembly and a service file with an extension   .asmx will have the code for the service.

-WCF Service can be hosted within IIS or WindowsActivationService.

-In ASP.NET Web services, unhandled exceptions are returned to the client as SOAP faults.
-In WCF Services, unhandled exceptions are not returned to clients as SOAP faults. To return SOAP faults    to clients, you can throw instances of the generic type, FaultException, using the data contract type as the    generic type.

-Web services provides only singlex communication,but WCF Supports shalf duplex and full duplex communication.

Half duplex

Half-duplex data transmission means that data can be transmitted in both directions on a signal carrier, but not at the same time.
half-duplex transmission implies a bidirectional line (one that can carry data in both directions).

They work in an stateless fashion over HTTP and are hosted inside a web server like IIS

Full duplex

Full-duplex data transmission means that data can be transmitted in both directions on a signal carrier at the same time.
Full-duplex transmission necessarily implies a bidirectional line (one that can move data in both directions).


WCF is a replacement for all earlier web service technologies from microsoft.