Workflow Foundation: Do I use a Web Service or WCF - what's best for my WF?

Question

I'm building a workflow app to investigate the technology. I can't decide whether to go for a web service (and a technology with which I'm basically familiar) with WebServiceInputActivity's or WCF and ReceiveActivity's (and a new technology that I'll have to learn).

Are there any major reasons to go either way?

Clarification:

Are there any major (architectural) reasons relating specifically to WF to go either way? I appreciate the input of the respondants, so far, but they focus on WCF rather than what the implications are for my workflow and its lifetime, maintainability, performance, expandability, etc. if I choose WebServices or WCF.

Answer 1

WF and WCF are very much hand in hand in .net 4. I'd definitely suggest the latter.

Answer 2

No doubt, it is WCF. Migrating ASP.NET Web Services to WCF

SUMMARY: Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides a unified framework for rapidly building service-oriented applications that makes it easy to build and consume secure, reliable, and transacted Web services. WCF’s single programming model unifies the capabilities in ASMX, WSE, Remoting, COM+, and MSMQ; therefore developers need to learn only one programming model.

Answer 3

Agree with the others here that you should go with WCF.

Just thought to add one more point, that just because you use WCF does not mean that you cannot access existing web services. You can use a WCF client with basichttpbinding, to access existing non WCF web services.

Answer 4

You are making a mistake to call ASMX web services "web services" and suggesting that WCF can't be used to make web services. A WCF service using basicHttpBinding is exactly like an old ASMX service.

The best reason to use WCF instead of ASMX is that Microsoft has now stated that ASMX is a "legacy technology", and that they will not be fixing bugs in it.