Sunday, August 23, 2009

WCF Hosting

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services can be hosted with Internet Information Services (IIS); with the new Windows Activation Service (WAS) installed with IIS 7.0; or with any managed application process including console, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), or managed Windows service applications.

Selecting the right hosting environment for your services is a choice driven largely by deployment requirements related to transport protocol and operating platform.

A summary of hosting options and supported features:

Feature Self-Hosting IIS Hosting WAS Hosting
Executable Process/ App Domain Yes Yes Yes
Configuration App.config Web.config Web.config
Activation Manual at startup Message-based Message-based
Idle-Time Management No Yes Yes
Health Monitoring No Yes Yes
Process Recycling No Yes Yes
Management Tools No Yes Yes



A summary of hosting options based on operating platform and communication protocol:

Operating Platform Protocol Hosting Options
Windows XP/SP2 HTTP IIS 5.1 or self-host
Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ Self-host
Windows Vista HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ WAS or self-host
Windows Server 2003 HTTP IIS 6.0
Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ Self-host
Windows Longhorn Server HTTP, Named Pipes, TCP, MSMQ IIS 7.0/WAS or self-host




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