Fundamental Concepts of WCF

Fundamental Concepts of WCF

Message

This is a communication unit that comprises of several parts apart from the body. Message instances are sent as well as received for all types of communication between the client and the service.

Endpoint

It defines the address where a message is to be sent or received. It also specifies the communication mechanism to describe how the messages will be sent along with defining the set of messages. A structure of an endpoint comprises of the following parts:

• Address - Address specifies the exact location to receive the messages and is specified as a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI). It is expressed as scheme://domain[:port]/[path]. Take a look at the address mentioned below:

  net.tcp://localhost:9000/ServiceA

  Here, 'net.tcp' is the scheme for the TCP protocol. The domain is 'localhost' which can be the name of a machine or a web domain, and the path is 'ServiceA'.

• Binding - It defines the way an endpoint communicates. It comprises of some binding elements that make the infrastructure for communication. For example, a binding states the protocols used for transport like TCP, HTTP, etc., the format of message encoding, and the protocols related to security as well as reliability.

• Contracts - It is a collection of operations that specifies what functionality the endpoint exposes to the clinet. It generally consists of an interface name.