WCF with VB.NET

Types of Binding in WCF

Introduction

What is Binding? Types of Bindings in Windows Communication Foundation.

The Binding is an attribute of an endpoint and it lets you configure transport protocol, encoding and security requirements as shown in Figure below:

Basically, there are eight types of Bindings in WCF. These are as following:

  1. BasicHttpBinding
  2. WSHttpBinding
  3. WSDualHttpBinding
  4. WSFederationHttpBinding
  5. NetTcpBinding
  6. NetNamedPipeBinding
  7. NetMsmqBinding
  8. NetPeerTcpBinding1

BasicHttpBinding:

  • It is used for communicating with ASP.NET Web services (ASMX)-based services that is comfortable with WS-Basic Profile Web services.
  • In this, HTTP is used as the transport .
  • In this, text/XML used as the default message encoding.
  • Weak on interoperability.
  • This binding does not support WS-* functionalities like:-WS- Addressing, WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging.

WSHttpBinding:

  • It defines a secure, reliable, interoperable binding suitable for non-duplex service contracts.
  • Supports WS-* functionality and distributed transactions with reliable and secure sessions using SOAP security.
  • HTTP and HTTPS transport are used for communication.
  • In this, Reliable sessions are disabled by default.
  • It offers lot more functionality in the area of interoperability.

WSDualHttpBinding:

  • It support duplex service. Otherwise it is same as WSHttpBinding.
    Now a question arise, What is a Duplex service?
    Ans: Duplex service is a service which uses duplex message pattern, which allows service to communicate with client via callback.
    In this Binding, reliable sessions are enabled by default. It also supports communication via SOAP intermediaries.

WSFederationHttpBinding:

  • It support federated security.
  • Helps in implementing federation which is the ability to flow and share identities across multiple enterprises.
  • It supports WS-Federation protocol.
     

NetTcpBinding:

  • It provides secure and reliable binding environment for .Net to .Net cross machine communication.
  • It creates communication stack using WS-ReliableMessaging protocol for reliability,TCP for message delivery and windows security for message and authentication at run time.
  • It uses TCP protocol and provides support for security, transaction and reliability.

NetPeerTcpBinding:

  • It Provides full support for SOAP security,transaction and reliability.
  • TCP used for communication.
  • Provides secure binding for peer- to- peer environment and network.

NetMsmqBinding:

  • Used for enabling disconnected operations,overload leveling etc.
  • MSMQ is used for queuing.
  • It provides secure and reliable queued communication for cross-machine environment.

NetNamedPipeBinding:

  • It uses NamedPipe protocol and provides full support for SOAP security.
  • This binding also provides secure and reliable binding environment for on-machine process communication.
  • It creates communication stack with WS-ReliableMessaging for reliability,named piped for message delivery and binary encoding.

Process to set up BasicHttpBinding:

Let us examine how to setup binding for an endpoint in the web.config file.

Step 1: Choose basicHttpBinding as a value in the binding attribute of an endpoint.

<endpoint
address="http://localhost:8731/EmployeeWCFService.ServiceImplementation.Manager/"
binding="basicHttpBinding" 
bindingConfiguration="basicBinding"
contract=" EmployeeWCFService.ServiceContract.IEmployee">
Step 2: This step is optional and is only required if the binding's default properties need to be modified, as shown in the example below. In this case, name the binding same as bindingConfiguration attribute in the endpoint section.

<bindings>|
<basicHttpBinding>
            <binding    name="basicBinding"
textEncoding="utf-8"
openTimeout="00:03:00"
closeTimeout="00:03:00"
/>

</basicHttpBinding>          
</bindings>

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