What is the difference between WCF Service application and WCF Service library?

Question

Hi,

I am developing WCF web service and I used WCF Service application to do that.Is that creating "WCF Service application" fulfill this requirement.

and above all what are the advantage of creating WCF Service Library over WCF Service application?

Answer 1

If all you have is the one project I see only added complexity if you separate for the heck of it. I used a library when I had some particular use cases where I had to host in both a windows service and in IIS.

For IIS you you can move the classes and interfaces to a library but keep your .SVC files in the web project. You must edit the .SVC files to point to the properly qualified classes.

Answer 2

A service application includes a website host already setup for you. A service library is a library of services that a host can reference and startup.

If you start with a service library (recommended) you can then choose any host you wish (a windows service, IIS/ASP.NET, or even a console application) and you'd just reference your library from your new host. Choosing a Service Application limits your host to just IIS/ASP.NET (though this might be ok for your purposes, but will limit the protocols you can use).