Top 49 Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Interview Questions You Must Prepare 19.Mar.2024

Data Contracts, is used to define Required or NonRequired data members. It can be done with a property named IsRequired on DataMember attribute.

[DataContract]
public class test
{
[DataMember(IsRequired=true)]
public string NameIsMust;
[DataMember(IsRequired=false)]
public string Phone;
}

A service is a unit of functionality exposed to the world.

DataContractSerializer is new WCF serializer.

This is serialization engine in WCF. DataContractSerializer translate the .NET framework objects into XML and viceversa.

By default WCF uses DataContractSeriazer.

The proxy is a CLR class that exposes a single CLR interface representing the service contract. The proxy provides the same operations as service's contract, but also has additional methods for managing the proxy life cycle and the connection to the service. The proxy completely encapsulates every aspect of the service: its location, its implementation technology and runtime platform, and the communication transport.

The proxy can be generated using Visual Studio by right clicking Reference and clicking on Add Service Reference. This brings up the Add Service Reference dialog box, where you need to supply the base address of the service (or a base address and a MEX URI) and the namespace to contain the proxy.

Proxy can also be generated by using SvcUtil.exe commandline utility. We need to provide SvcUtil with the HTTPGET address or the metadata exchange endpoint address and, optionally, with a proxy filename. The default proxy filename is output.cs but you can also use the /out switch to indicate a different name.

SvcUtil http://localhost/MyService/MyService.svc /out:Proxy.cs

When we are hosting in IIS and selecting a port other than port 80 (such as port 88), we must provide that port number as part of the base address:

SvcUtil http://localhost:88/MyService/MyService.svc /out:Proxy.cs

However, the service cannot return a .NET exception to the client. The WCF service and the client communicate by passing SOAP messages. If an exception occurs, the WCF runtime serializes the exception into XML and passes that to the client.

Every WCF services must be hosted somewhere. There are three ways of hosting WCF services.

They are

  1. IIS
  2. Self Hosting
  3. WAS (Windows Activation Service)

.svc file is a text file. This file is similar to our .asmx file in web services.

This file contains the details required for WCF service to run it successfully.

This file contains following details :

  1. Language (C# / VB)
  2. Name of the service
  3. Where the service code resides

Example of .svc file

<%@ ServiceHost Language="C#/VB" Debug="true/false" CodeBehind="Service code files path" Service="ServiceName"

The main components of WCF are

  1. Service class
  2. Hosting environment
  3. End point

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is an SDK for developing and deploying services on Windows. WCF provides a runtime environment for services, enabling you to expose CLR types as services, and to consume other services as CLR types.

WCF is part of .NET 3.0 and requires .NET 2.0, so it can only run on systems that support it.

In WCF, all services expose contracts. The contract is a platformneutral and standard way of describing what the service does.

WCF defines four types of contracts.

Service contracts: Describe which operations the client can perform on the service.

There are two types of Service Contracts.

  • ServiceContract This attribute is used to define the Interface.
  • OperationContract This attribute is used to define the method inside Interface.

Data contracts: Define which data types are passed to and from the service. WCF defines implicit contracts for builtin types such as int and string, but we can easily define explicit optin data contracts for custom types.

There are two types of Data Contracts.

  • DataContract attribute
  • used to define the class
  • DataMember attribute
  • used to define the properties.

Fault contracts: Define which errors are raised by the service, and how the service handles and propagates errors to its clients.

Message contracts: Allow the service to interact directly with messages. Message contracts can be typed or untyped, and are useful in interoperability cases and when there is an existing message format we have to comply with.

In WCF, following bindings supports the reliable session

  1. wsHttpBinding
  2. wsDualHttpBinding
  3. wsFederationHttpBinding
  4. netTcpBinding

WAS (Windows Activation Service) is a component of IIS 7.@Following are few advantages :

  1. We are not only limited to HTTP protocol. We can also use supported protocols like TCP, named pipes and MSMQ
  2. No need to completely install IIS. We can only install WAS component and keep away the WebServer.

WCF supports following 3 types of transactions managers:

  1. LightWeight
  2. OLE Transactions
  3. WSAtomic Transactions

Following bindings supports the streaming in WCF:

  1. basicHttpBinding
  2. netTcpBinding
  3. netNamedPipeBinding

In WCF, instancing mode is set at service level. For ex.

//Setting PerSession instance mode
[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode = InstanceContextMode.PerSession)]
class MyService : IMyService
{
//Implementation goes there
}

Fault Contract is used to document the errors occurred in the service to client.

Two data contracts are said to be equivalent, if they satisfy the following conditions.

  • Both the datacontracts must have same namespace
  • Both the datacontracts must have same name
  • The data member on data contract must have an equivalent data member on the other.
  • The members in the datacontract must appear in the same order in both datacontracts.

Ex:

The following two data contracts are equal.

[DataContract]
public class Person
{
[DataMember]
public string Name;
[DataMember]
public string Email_ID;
}
[DataContract(Name = "Person")]
public class Employee
{
[DataMember(Name = "Name")]
private string EmpName;
private string address;
[DataMember(Name = "Email_ID")]
private string EmpEmailId;
}

We Should remember ABC.

Address Specifies the location of the service which will be like http://Myserver/MyService.Clients will use this location to communicate with our service.

Binding Specifies how the two paries will communicate in term of transport and encoding and protocols

Contract Specifies the interface between client and the server.It's a simple interface with some attribute.

Self hosting the service in his own application domain. This we have already covered in the first section. The service comes in to existence when you create the object of ServiceHost class and the service closes when you call the Close of the ServiceHost class.

Host in application domain or process provided by IIS Server.

Host in Application domain and process provided by WAS (Windows Activation Service) Server.

When multiple endpoints are associated with WCF service, base address (one primary address) is assigned to the service, and relative addresses are assigned to each endpoint. Base address is specified in <host> element for each service.

E.g.

<configuration>
<system.servicemodel>
<Services>
<service name=”MyService>
<host>
<baseAddresses>
<add baseAddress =”http://localhost:6070/MyService”>
</baseAddresses>
</host>
</service>
<services>
</system.servicemodel>
</configuration>

SOA is Service Oriented Architecture. SOA service is the encapsulation of a high level business concept. A SOA service is composed of three parts.

  1. A service class implementing the service to be provided.
  2. An environment to host the service.
  3. One or more endpoints to which clients will connect.

  • BasicHttpBinding
  • WSHttpBinding
  • WSDualHttpBinding
  • WSFederationHttpBinding
  • NetTcpBinding
  • NetNamedPipeBinding
  • NetMsmqBinding
  • NetPeerTcpBinding
  • MsmqIntegrationBinding

Address format of WCF transport schema always follow

[transport]://[machine or domain][:optional port] format.

for example:

HTTP Address Format

http://localhost:8888

the way to read the above url is

"Using HTTP, go to the machine called localhost, where on port 8888 someone is waiting"

When the port number is not specified, the default port is 80.

TCP Address Format

net.tcp://localhost:8888/MyService

When a port number is not specified, the default port is 808:

net.tcp://localhost/MyService

NOTE: Two HTTP and TCP addresses from the same host can share a port, even on the same machine.

IPC Address Format

net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe

We can only open a named pipe once per machine, and therefore it is not possible for two named pipe addresses to share a pipe name on the same machine.

MSMQ Address Format

net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService

net.msmq://localhost/MyService

WCF Services client configuration file contains endpoint, address, binding and contract. A sample client config file looks like

<system.serviceModel>
<client>
<endpoint name = "MyEndpoint"
address = "http://localhost:8000/MyService/"
binding = "wsHttpBinding"
contract = "IMyContract"
/>
</client>
</system.serviceModel>

ABC is the three building blocks of WCF and they are known as

A Address (Where): Address tells us where to find the services, like url

B Bindings (How): Bindings tells us how to find the services or using which protocols finds the services (SOAP, HTTP, TCT etc.)

C Contacts (What): Contracts are an agreement between the consumer and the service providers that explains what parameters the service expects and what return values it gives.

By default overload operations (methods) are not supported in WSDL based operation. However by using Name property of OperationContract attribute, we can deal with operation overloading scenario.

[ServiceContract]
interface ICalculator
{
[OperationContract(Name = "AddInt")]
int Add(int arg1,int arg2);
[OperationContract(Name = "AddDouble")]
double Add(double arg1,double arg2);
}

Notice that both method name in the above interface is same (Add), however the Name property of the OperationContract is different. In this case client proxy will have two methods with different name AddInt and AddDouble.

SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), which is directly supported from WCF (Windows Communication Foundation).

A binding defines how an endpoint communicates to the world. A binding defines the transport (such as HTTP or TCP) and the encoding being used (such as text or binary). A binding can contain binding elements that specify details like the security mechanisms used to secure messages, or the message pattern used by an endpoint.

WCF supports nine types of bindings.

  1. Basic binding: Offered by the BasicHttpBinding class, this is designed to expose a WCF service as a legacy ASMX web service, so that old clients can work with new services. When used by the client, this binding enables new WCF clients to work with old ASMX services.
  2. TCP binding: Offered by the NetTcpBinding class, this uses TCP for crossmachine communication on the intranet. It supports a variety of features, including reliability, transactions, and security, and is optimized for WCFtoWCF communication. As a result, it requires both the client and the service to use WCF.
  3. Peer network binding Offered by the NetPeerTcpBinding class, this uses peer networking as a transport. The peer networkenabled client and services all subscribe to the same grid and broadcast messages to it.
  4. IPC binding: Offered by the NetNamedPipeBinding class, this uses named pipes as a transport for samemachine communication. It is the most secure binding since it cannot accept calls from outside the machine and it supports a variety of features similar to the TCP binding.
  5. Web Service (WS) binding: Offered by the WSHttpBinding class, this uses HTTP or HTTPS for transport, and is designed to offer a variety of features such as reliability, transactions, and security over the Internet.
  6. Federated WS binding: Offered by the WSFederationHttpBinding class, this is a specialization of the WS binding, offering support for federated security.
  7. Duplex WS binding: Offered by the WSDualHttpBinding class, this is similar to the WS binding except it also supports bidirectional communication from the service to the client.
  8. MSMQ binding: Offered by the NetMsmqBinding class, this uses MSMQ for transport and is designed to offer support for disconnected queued calls.
  9. MSMQ integration binding: Offered by the MsmqIntegrationBinding class, this converts WCF messages to and from MSMQ messages, and is designed to interoperate with legacy MSMQ clients.

  1. Provides process activation and recycling ability thereby increasing reliability
  2. It is a simplified way of deployment and development of hosted services.
  3. Hosting WCF services in IIS can take advantage of scalability and density features of ASP.NET

We can customize the generic datacontract names by allowing parameters. Find the Example below

[DataContract(Name = "Shape_{1}_brush_and_{0}_shape")]
public class Shape< Square,RedBrush>
{
// Code not shown.
}

Here, the Data Contract Name is "Shape_RedBrush_brush_and_Square_shape”

{0} - First Parameter in the generic type.

{1} - Second Parameter in the generic type.

Message Contract : Message Contract is the way to control the SOAP messages, sent and received by the client and server.

Message Contract can be used to add and to get the custom headers in SOAP message Because of Message Contract we can customize the parameters sent using SOAP message between the server and client.

Reliability can be configured in the client config file by adding reliableSession under binding tag.

<system.serviceModel>
<services>
<service name = "MyService">
<endpoint
address = "net.tcp://localhost:8888/MyService"
binding = "netTcpBinding"
bindingConfiguration = "ReliableCommunication"
contract = "IMyContract"
/>
</service>
</services>
<bindings>
<netTcpBinding>
<binding name = "ReliableCommunication">
<reliableSession enabled = "true"/>
</binding>
</netTcpBinding>
</bindings>
</system.serviceModel>

Reliability is supported by following bindings only

NetTcpBinding
WSHttpBinding
WSFederationHttpBinding
WSDualHttpBinding

There are three major ways of hosting a WCF services

  • Selfhosting the service in his own application domain. This we have already covered in the first section. The service comes in to existence when you create the object of Service Host class and the service closes when you call the Close of the Service Host class.
  • Host in application domain or process provided by IIS Server.
  • Host in Application domain and process provided by WAS (Windows Activation Service) Server.

Transport reliability (such as the one offered by TCP) offers pointtopoint guaranteed delivery at the network packet level, as well as guarantees the order of the packets. Transport reliability is not resilient to dropping network connections and a variety of other communication problems.

Message reliability deals with reliability at the message level independent of how many packets are required to deliver the message. Message reliability provides for endtoend guaranteed delivery and order of messages, regardless of how many intermediaries are involved, and how many network hops are required to deliver the message from the client to the service.

ServiceBehaviour attribute is used to specify the InstanceContextMode for the WCF Service class (This can be used to maintained a state of the service or a client too)

There are three instance Context Mode in the WFC

PerSession : This is used to create a new instance for a service and the same instance is used for all method for a particular client. (eg: State can be maintained per session by declaring a variable)

PerCall : This is used to create a new instance for every call from the client whether same client or different. (eg: No state can be maintained as every time a new instance of the service is created)

Single : This is used to create only one instance of the service and the same instance is used for all the client request. (eg: Global state can be maintained but this will be applicable for all clients)

WCF 3.5 provides explicit support for RESTful communication using a new binding named WebHttpBinding.

The below code shows how to expose a RESTful service

[ServiceContract]
interface IStock
{
[OperationContract]
[WebGet]
int GetStock(string StockId);
}

Every service must have Address that defines where the service resides, Contract that defines what the service does and a Binding that defines how to communicate with the service. In WCF the relationship between Address, Contract and Binding is called Endpoint.

The code name of WCF was Indigo .

WCF is a unification of .NET framework communication technologies which unites the following technologies:

  • NET remoting
  • MSMQ
  • Web services
  • COM+

  1. DataContractSerializer is the default serializer fot the WCF
  2. DataContractSerializer is very fast.
  3. DataContractSerializer is basically for very small, simple subset of the XML infoset.
  4. XMLSerializer is used for complex schemas.

WCF Services can be hosted on following platforms

  1. WAS(Windows Activation Service)
  2. Self Hosting
  3. IIS

Address Header contains the information which is sent with every request, it can be used by either end point service or any intermediate device for determining any routing logic or processing logic.

WCF provides AddressHeader class for this purpose.

Example :

AddressHeader addressHeader= AddressHeader.CreateAddressHeader("Name of the header", "Information included in header ");

Once the AddressHeader instance is created, it can be associated with end point instance as follows :

EndpointAddress endpoint = new EndpointAddress(new Uri("http://myserver/myservice"), addressHeader);

Messaging Pattern : Messaging patterns describes how client and server should exchange the message. There is a protocol between client and server for sending and receiving the message. These are also called Message Exchange Pattern.

WCF supports following 3 types of Message Exchange Patterns

  1. request reply- (default message exchange pattern)
  2. OneWay (Simplex / datagram)
  3. Duplex(CallBack)

Address is a way of letting client know that where a service is located. In WCF, every service is associated with a unique address. This contains the location of the service and transport schemas.

WCF supports following transport schemas

HTTP
TCP
Peer network
IPC (InterProcess
Communication over named pipes)
MSMQ

  1. Service host factory is the mechanism by which we can create the instances of service host dynamically as the request comes in.
  2. This is useful when we need to implement the event handlers for opening and closing the service.
  3. WCF provides ServiceFactory class for this purpose.

The timeout property can be set for the WCF Service client call using binding tag.

<client>
<endpoint
...
binding = "wsHttpBinding"
bindingConfiguration = "LongTimeout"
...
/>
</client>
<bindings>
<wsHttpBinding>
<binding name = "LongTimeout" sendTimeout = "00:04:00"/>
</wsHttpBinding>
</bindings>

If no timeout has been specified, the default is considered as 1 minute.

The concurrency mode is specified using the ServiceBehavior attribute on the class that implements the service.

Ex.

[ServiceBehavior(ConcurrencyMode=ConcurrencyMode.Single)]
Public class ServiceClass : IServiceInterface{
//Implementation Code
}

There are 3 possible values of ConcurrencyMode enumeration

  1. Single
  2. Reentrant
  3. Multiple

Fault Contracts is the way to handle exceptions in WCF. The problem with exceptions is that those are technology specific and therefore cannot be passed to other end because of interoperability issue. (Means either from Client to Server or viceversa).

There must be another way representing the exception to support the interoperability. And here the SOAP Faults comes into the picture.

Soap faults are not specific to any particular technology and they are based on industry standards.

To support SOAP Faults WCF provides FaultException class. This class has two forms:

  • FaultException : to send untyped fault back to consumer
  • FaultException<T>: to send typed fault data to the client

WCF service also provides FaultContract attribute so that developer can specify which fault can be sent by the operation (method). This attribute can be applied to operations only.

Web services can only be invoked by HTTP (traditional webservice with .asmx). While WCF Service or a WCF component can be invoked by any protocol (like http, tcp etc.) and any transport type.

Second web services are not flexible. However, WCF Services are flexible. If you make a new version of the service then you need to just expose a new end. Therefore, services are agile and which is a very practical approach looking at the current business trends.

We develop WCF as contracts, interface, operations, and data contracts. As the developer we are more focused on the business logic services and need not worry about channel stack. WCF is a unified programming API for any kind of services so we create the service and use configuration information to set up the communication mechanism like HTTP/TCP/MSMQ etc

Web Services

  1. It Can be accessed only over HTTP
  2. It works in stateless environment

WCF

WCF is flexible because its services can be hosted in different types of applications. The following lists several common scenarios for hosting WCF services:

  1. IIS
  2. WAS
  3. Selfhosting
  4. Managed Windows Service