WCF was first introduced in Microsoft's .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) version 2.0. The corresponding framework at that time was .NET 3.0. To develop and run the WCF services, Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 or above is required.
Visual Studio is Microsoft's IDE for developing the WCF service applications. Visual Studio 2008 and above support WCF service application development.
The following table shows all of the different versions of the .NET runtimes, .NET Frameworks, and Visual Studios, along with their relationships: