WCF has its own web server?

Question

I just discovered, quite by accident, that a WCF service hosted in a Windows Service ill work with a HTTP binding. It seems to implement its own web server, but I have never seen this capability mentioned anywhere, and can't find any documentation on what the capabilities of the HTTP listener are (in terms of worker threads, etc.) Anyone have a pointer?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hi, if you google for self-hosting and WCF, you will come up with a wealth of information. The full power of WCF is available in this manner. The service can have accept multiple calls, and WCF can do the multithreading for you. You can also check out the WCF REST starter kit for more information.

Answer 2

Well, if it is going to support anything using the HTTP protocol, it would be definition have to be a web server.

The capabilities are that of the service host. Whatever you set for the throttles are going to be the capabilities of the server.

However, if you are going to have large loads on the service, you might want to consider hosting in IIS, as it offers more in the way of app recycling, fault tolerance, etc, etc.

Answer 3

Is System.ServiceModel.ServiceHost what you mean? The wcf configuration and ServiceBehavior allow you to set up concurrency settings, etc.