What is the difference between WCF Services and Web Services in .net
When should I use WCF and when to use Web Services.Is REST and WCF service the same? Thanks
Rest – difference between WCF Services and Web Services and REST Service
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Simple explanation about SOAP and REST
SOAP - "Simple Object Access Protocol"
SOAP is a method of transferring messages, or small amounts of information, over the Internet. SOAP messages are formatted in XML and are typically sent using HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol).
Rest - Representational state transfer
Rest is a simple way of sending and receiving data between client and server and it doesn't have very many standards defined. You can send and receive data as JSON, XML or even plain text. It's light weighted compared to SOAP.
Representational state transfer (REST) is a style of software architecture. As described in a dissertation by Roy Fielding, REST is an "architectural style" that basically exploits the existing technology and protocols of the Web.
RESTful is typically used to refer to web services implementing such an architecture.
Best Answer
Web Service is an abstract term encompassing a large variety of data providers for distributed systems. Perhaps you are referring to ASMX web services, which can still be found in the wild but aren't really widely used in new development these days.
WCF Service is Microsoft's implementation of SOAP. There are others implementations or you could roll your own (not recommended).
SOAP is a kind of stateful, session-based, message-based web service. It's good if your service is designed as a set of complex actions.
REST is a stateless, sessionless, resource-based web service. It's good if your service is designed to access data and perform simple CRUD operations on it. SOAP and REST are mutually exclusive. A service cannot be both. There are ways to manipulate vanilla WCF to make is RESTful but these techniques are becoming deprecated. If you want to implement a RESTful web service there are two main choices in the Microsoft world: WCF Data Services and ASP.NET Web API.