A web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. Web services have been around for a while, but it is the service-oriented architecture (SOA) that makes web services much more popular today. Now with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), a new era has begun for developing services, including web services, on the Microsoft platform.
In this chapter, we will learn concepts and definitions related to SOA, web services, and WCF. We will discuss each of the following in detail:
- What is SOA?
- Web service and its relation to SOA
- Standards and specifications for web services
- What is WCF?
- Use of WCF for SOA
- WCF architecture
- Basic WCF concepts
- WCF production and development environments
SOA is the acronym for service-oriented architecture. SOA is an architectural design pattern by which several guiding principles determine the nature of the design. Basically, SOA states that every component of a system should be a service, and the system should be composed of several loosely-coupled services. A service here means a unit of a program that serves a business process. Loosely-coupled here means that these services should be independent of each other so that changing one of them should not affect any other services.
SOA is neither a specific technology nor a specific language. It is just a blueprint or a system design approach. It is an architectural model that aims to enhance the efficiency, agility, and productivity of an enterprise system. The key concepts of SOA are services, high interoperability, and loose coupling.