RESTful WCF service over standard WCF Service

Question

What is the main difference between RESTful WCF service over standard WCF service? I am not sure where and why to use it and are there any extra advantages of it?

For our current project we are going to use ASP.net MVC, so will RESTful WCF be any helpful from that point of view?

Are there any specific disadvantages of using RESTful WCF service??

Thanks a lot..

Answer 1

The difference is how clients access your service. Normally, a WCF service will use SOAP, but if you build a REST service clients will be accessing your service with a different architectural style (calls, serialization like JSON, etc). Here's a terrific white paper on RESTful WCF. Lots more info on REST & WCF here.

In terms of downside, you lose much of the work that has been done on SOAP header specifications (WS-* like WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-AtomicTransactions for example). Also, SOAP is transport neutral whereas REST presupposes HTTP.