What is Binding and How Many types of Bindings are there in WCF

Question

Hi What is binding and how many types of bindings are there in WCF ?

Akkiraju Ivaturi · Answer

WCF provides nine built-in bindings: BasicHttpBinding : Basic web service communication. Exposes WCF services as legacy ASMX web services. Used for interoperability. No security by default. WSHttpBinding : Web services with WS-* support. Supports transactions and reliable messaging. WSDualHttpBinding : Web services with duplex contract and transaction support. WSFederationHttpBinding : Web services with federated security. Supports transactions. MsmqIntegrationBinding : Communication directly with MSMQ applications. Supports transactions. NetMsmqBinding : Communication between WCF applications by using queuing. Supports transactions. NetNamedPipeBinding : Communication between WCF applications on same computer. Supports duplex contracts and transactions. NetPeerTcpBinding : Communication between computers across peer-to-peer services. Supports duplex contracts. NetTcpBinding : Communication between WCF applications across computers. Supports duplex contracts and transactions. Although most bindings will work on scenarios they are not designed for it's a good practice to choose the right binding for a given a situation. You need to identify your potential use-cases and apply a Binding Decision best practices.

Akkiraju Ivaturi · Answer

Binding will describes how client will communicate with service. There are different protocols available for the WCF to communicate to the Client. You can mention the protocol type based on your requirements. Binding has several characteristics including the following: Transport Defines the base protocol to be used like HTTP Named Pipes TCP and MSMQ are some type of protocols. Encoding (Optional) Three types of encoding are available-Text Binary or Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM). MTOM is an interoperable message format that allows the effective transmission of attachments or large messages (greater than 64K). Protocol(Optional) Defines information to be used in the binding such as Security transaction or reliable messaging capability