What is the difference between building a WSDL in Eclipse and using WCF?

Question

I'm somewhat familiar with WCF in that I can build Web Services in VS.Net ... I understand some of the concepts...

But, the other day I cam across this option in Eclipse (I also use Java to code) to create a WSDL. Playing around with it it looks great since it has a GUI method of building itself.

I guess I just wanna know what the difference is.

1) Are they different technologies like WSDL vs WCF? Or, is it that WCF uses WSDLs?

2) I read that WSDLs are a top-down approach... so what about WCF, is that top-down or is that bottom-up?

3) Will this WSDL in Eclipse actually be able to generate CSharp code for my server and client efficiently, or will it require a lot of fixing?

Answer 1

1. Windows Communication Framework and other services frameworks use standards like the Web Service Definition Language to communicate specifications.

2. WSDL is neither inherently top-down nor bottom-up. You can do it either way; that is, you can design your interface using WSDL and then code your service to the WSDL, or you can design your application and use a tool like those built into Visual Studio and Eclipse to automatically generate the WSDL. There are pros and cons (and proponents and opponents) to both approaches.

3. IDEs like Visual Studio and Eclipse usually do a good job (probably better than humans) of generating WSDL. I haven't used the Eclipse plugin for C# (I'm assuming there is one and that's what you're using if you want to generate C# in Eclipse), so I can't speak for its functionality.

EDIT: I answered question 3 backwards, but the answer still applies. The WSDL-to-code generators also generally do a good job just like the code-to-WSDL generators.