The Future of ASP.NET Web Services in the Context of the Windows Communication Foundation

This is great article on "The Future of ASP.NET Web Services in the Context of the Windows Communication Foundation" by Craig McMurtry. This article mainly discusses on WS and WCF, their comparision/diffrences and strategy for adopting WCF.


The ASP.NET Web services tools are solely for building Web services, the Windows Communication Foundation provides tools for use in any circumstance where software entities must be made to communicate with one another. Even for Web service development projects, the Windows Communication Foundation supports more Web service protocols than ASP.NET Web services support. Those protocols provide for more sophisticated solutions involving, amongst other things, reliable sessions and transactions. The recommended course of action in most cases is to adopt the Windows Communication Foundation for new development, while continuing to maintain existing ASP.NET Web service applications. That course of action yields the benefits of the Windows Communication Foundation, while sparing the cost of migrating existing applications. New Windows Communication Foundation applications will be able to use existing ASP.NET Web services, and can co-exist with existing ASP.NET applications. The Windows Communication Foundation can even be used to program new operational capabilities into existing ASP.NET applications by virtue of the Windows Communication Foundation's ASP.NET compatibility mode.