I'm learning WCF and I'm stumped; why would I use this over a regular web service?

Question

What benefits does WCF bring to the table and why should I use this new technology over good old ASP.Net web services?

Answer 1

Here is a good article from msdn that talks about the differences between ASMX and WCF

A few key areas

1. Serialization - Asmx uses XmlSerializer while WCF uses the DataContractSerializer. The Datacontract serializer is about 10% faster (source along with other information) Differences Between ASMX and WCF Services
2. Greater protocol support (HTTP, TCP, ICP, MSMQ for WCF), ASMX only supports HTTP

Answer 2

Maybe you don't need to transition to WCF if regular Web-Service will work for you, however WCF encompasses more than just Web-Services.

With WCF you can utilize different communication channels (such as Web-Services, MSMQ, named pipes...) utilizing the same end-point service handler code.

WCF also has different built-in security mechanisms, allows you to utilize different serialization mechanisms (if something other than Soap is needed like raw JSON), hosting of services without the requirement of needing a web project etc...

As such WCF is more a general service hosting framework that can replace regular ASMX web services