Glossary:Definition - Windows Communication Foundation
Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio
| Term | Windows Communication Foundation | |
| Definition | WCF is a communications subsystem built around Web services in Windows Vista. WCF aims at providing encoding, hosting, messaging patterns, networking, security, spanning transports, and more. WCF is designed to provide a consistent experience for building connected systems. Pre-release code name was Indigo.
The WCF programming model reconciles .NET Remoting, Distributed Transactions, Message Queues, and Web Services into a single service-oriented programming model for distributed computing. WCF provides a rapid application development (RAD) methodology for Web services development. WCF features a single API for inter-process communication on a LAN, a local machine, or via the Internet. WCF provides the enhanced .NET security model by running in a sandbox. WCF communicates between multiple processes via SOAP messages. This facilitates interoperability between WCF-based applications and any other processes that communicate via SOAP messages. XML-based encoding is used for SOAP messages when a WCF process communicates with a non–WCF process. But, when a WCF process communicates with another WCF process, SOAP messages are encoded in an optimized binary format. Both encodings conform to Infoset—a SOAP format data structure. | |
| See also | .NET Framework 3.0, Windows Vista | |
| You may edit this definition to improve or extend it. | ||
| Online Dictionary of Visual C# .NET Programming | |
| a free glossary of C# .NET terminology from C# Online.NET | edit |
