Wcf

WCF Interview Questions and Answer

What is WCF?
Windows Communication Foundation or just WCF is a programming framework used to build applications that communicate with each other. It is a part of the .NET Framework dedicated to communications.

What are the different WCF binding available?
• BasicHttpBinding
• WSHttpBinding
• WSDualHttpBinding
• WSFederationHttpBinding
• NetTcpBinding
• NetNamedPipeBinding
• NetMsmqBinding
• NetPeerTcpBinding
• MsmqIntegrationBinding

What is the proxy for WCF Service?
A proxy is a class by which a service client can Interact with the service. By the use of proxy in the client application we are able to call the different methods exposed by the service.

What is the difference between XMLSerializer and the DataContractSerializer?
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

What is endpoint in WCF service?
The endpoint is an Interface which defines how a client will communicate with the service. It consists of three main points: Address,Binding and Contract. 

What is the difference between WCF Service and Web Service?
1) WCF Service supports both http and tcp protocol while webservice supports only http protocol. 
2) WCF Service is more flexible than web service. 
3) WCF is combination of WebService, Remoting, MSMQ

What are the various ways of hosting a WCF service?
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. 

What is service and client in perspective of data communication?
A service is a unit of functionality exposed to the world.
The client of a service is merely the party consuming the service.

Q1. What is WCF?

WCF stands for Windows Communication Foundation. It is a Software development kit for developing services on Windows. WCF is introduced in .NET 3.0. in the System.ServiceModel namespace. WCF is based on basic concepts of Service oriented architecture (SOA)

Q2. What is endpoint in WCF service?
The endpoint is an Interface which defines how a client will communicate with the service. It consists of three main points: Address,Binding and Contract.

Q3. Explain Address,Binding and contract for a WCF Service?
Address:Address defines where the service resides.
Binding:Binding defines how to communicate with the service.
Contract:Contract defines what is done by the service.

Q4. What are the various address format in WCF?
a)HTTP Address Format:--> http://localhost:
b)TCP Address Format:--> net.tcp://localhost:
c)MSMQ Address Format:--> net.msmq://localhost:

Q5. What are the types of binding available in WCF?
A binding is identified by the transport it supports and the encoding it uses. Transport may be HTTP,TCP etc and encoding may be text,binary etc. The popular types of binding may be as below:
a)BasicHttpBinding
b)NetTcpBinding
c)WSHttpBinding
d)NetMsmqBinding

Q6. What are the types of contract available in WCF?
The main contracts are:
a)Service Contract:Describes what operations the client can perform.
b)Operation Contract : defines the method inside Interface of Service.
c)Data Contract:Defines what data types are passed
d)Message Contract:Defines wheather a service can interact directly with messages

Q7. What are the various ways of hosting a WCF Service?
a)IIS b)Self Hosting c)WAS (Windows Activation Service)

Q8. WWhat is the proxy for WCF Service?
A proxy is a class by which a service client can Interact with the service.
By the use of proxy in the client application we are able to call the different methods exposed by the service


Q9. How can we create Proxy for the WCF Service?
We can create proxy using the tool svcutil.exe after creating the service.
We can use the following command at command line.
svcutil.exe *.wsdl *.xsd /language:C# /out:SampleProxy.cs /config:app.config

Q10.What is the difference between WCF Service and Web Service?
a)WCF Service supports both http and tcp protocol while webservice supports only http protocol.
b)WCF Service is more flexible than web service.

Q11.What is DataContract and ServiceContract?Explain 
Data represented by creating DataContract which expose the
data which will be transefered /consumend from the serive
to its clients.

**Operations which is the functions provided by this
service.

To write an operation on WCF,you have to write it as an
interface,This interface contains the "Signature" of the
methods tagged by ServiceContract attribute,and all methods
signature will be impelemtned on this interface tagged with
OperationContract attribute.

and to implement these serivce contract you have to create
a class which implement the interface and the actual
implementation will be on that class.

Code Below show How to create a Service Contract: 
[ServiceContract]
Public Interface IEmpOperations
{
[OperationContract]
Decimal Get EmpSal(int EmpId);

}

Class MyEmp: IEmpOperations
{
Decimal Get EmpSal()
{
// Implementation of this method.
}
}

What is .NET 3.0? In one simple equation .NET 3.0 = .NET 2.0 + Windows Communication Foundation + Windows Presentation Foundation + Windows Workflow Foundation + Windows Card Space. What is WCF? 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. First let us give a short answer to this: - “WCF (Indigo was the code name for WCF) is a unification of .NET framework communication technologies “.WCF is a unification technology, which unites the following technologies:- • NET remoting • MSMQ • Web services • COM+. What was the code name for WCF? The code name of WCF was Indigo . WCF is a unification of .NET framework communication technologies which unites the following technologies:- 1.Web services 2.MSMQ 3.NET remoting 4.COM+ What are the main components of WCF? The main components of WCF are 1. Service class 2. Hosting environment 3. End point Where we can host WCF services? 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) What is service and client in perspective of data communication? A service is a unit of functionality exposed to the world. The client of a service is merely the party consuming the service. What are different elements of WCF Srevices Client configuration file? WCF Services client configuration file contains endpoint, address, binding and contract. A sample client config file looks like What is endpoint in WCF? 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. What are ends, contract, address, and bindings? The above terminologies are the core on which SOA stands. Every service must expose one or more ends by which the service can be available to the client. End consists of three important things where, what and how:- • Contract (What) Contract is an agreement between two or more parties. It defines the protocol how client should communicate with your service. Technically, it describes parameters and return values for a method. • Address (Where) An Address indicates where we can find this service. Address is a URL, which points to the location of the service. • Binding (How) Bindings determine how this end can be accessed. It determines how communications is done. For instance, you expose your service, which can be accessed using SOAP over HTTP or BINARY over TCP. So for each of these communications medium two bindings will be created. Below figure, show the three main components of end. You can see the stock ticker is the service class, which has an end hosted on http://www.soa.com with HTTP and TCP binding support and using Stock Ticker interface type. What is binding and how many types of bindings are there in WCF? 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. 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. This binding is used when we need to use SOAP over HTTP. This binding can also be configured to be used as HTTPS. It can be also configured to send data in plain text or in optimized form like MTOM. TCP binding Offered by the NetTcpBinding class, this uses TCP for cross-machine communication on the intranet. It supports a variety of features, including reliability, transactions, and security, and is optimized for WCF-to-WCF communication. As a result, it requires both the client and the service to use WCF. This binding sends binary-encoded SOAP, including support for reliable message transfer, security, and transactions, directly over TCP. The biggest disadvantage of NetTcpBinding is that both server and client should be also made in .NET language. Peer network binding Offered by the NetPeerTcpBinding class, this uses peer networking as a transport. The peer network-enabled client and services all subscribe to the same grid and broadcast messages to it. IPC binding Offered by the NetNamedPipeBinding class, this uses named pipes as a transport for same-machine 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. 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. It is same like BasicHttpBinding. In short, it uses SOAP over HTTP. But with it also supports reliable message transfer, security and transaction. WS-Reliable Messaging, security with WS-Security, and transactions with WS-Atomic Transaction supports reliable message. Federated WS binding Offered by the WSFederationHttpBinding class, this is a specialization of the WS binding, offering support for federated security. 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. MSMQ binding Offered by the NetMsmqBinding class, this uses MSMQ for transport and is designed to offer support for disconnected queued calls. 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. This binding sends binary-encoded SOAP over MSMQ. This binding can only be used for WCF-to-WCF communication.

What are the important principles of SOA (Service oriented Architecture)?

What are ends, contract, address, and bindings?

Which specifications does WCF follow?

What are the main components of WCF?

Explain how Ends, Contract, Address, and Bindings are done in WCF?

What is a service class?

What is a service contract, operation contract and Data Contract?

What are the various ways of hosting a WCF service?

How do we host a WCF service in IIS?

What are the advantages of hosting WCF Services in IIS as compared to self-hosting?

What are the major differences between services and Web services?

What is the difference WCF and Web services?

What are different bindings supported by WCF?

Which are the various programming approaches for WCF?

What is one-way operation?

Can you explain duplex contracts in WCF?

How can we host a service on two different protocols on a single server?

How can we use MSMQ bindings in WCF?

Can you explain transactions in WCF?

What different transaction isolation levels provided in WCF?

Can we do transactions using MSMQ?

Can we have two-way communications in MSMQ?

What are Volatile queues?

What are Dead letter queues?

What is a poison message?

	Difference between WCF and Web services? 1.Web Services can be accessed only over HTTP  2.Web Services works in stateless environment  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. Self-hosting 4. Managed Windows Service
	What are the various ways of hosting a WCF service? 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.
	What are three major points in WCF? 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.
	What was the code name for WCF? 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+
	What are the main components of WCF? The main components of WCF are 1. Service class 2. Hosting environment 3. End point
	What are different elements of WCF Srevices Client configuration file? WCF Services client configuration file contains endpoint, address, binding and contract. A sample client config file looks like
	What is Proxy and how to generate proxy for WCF Services? WCF Services client configuration file contains endpoint, address, binding and contract. A sample client config file looks like  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 command-line utility. We need to provide SvcUtil with the HTTP-GET 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
	What are contracts in WCF? In WCF, all services expose contracts. The contract is a platform-neutral 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. [ServiceContract] interface IMyContract { [OperationContract] string MyMethod( ); } class MyService : IMyContract { public string MyMethod( ) { return "Hello World"; } } Data contracts Define which data types are passed to and from the service. WCF defines implicit contracts for built-in types such as int and string, but we can easily define explicit opt-in 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. [DataContract] class Contact { [DataMember] public string FirstName; [DataMember] public string LastName; } If DataMember attributes are not specified for a properties in the class, that property can't be passed to-from web service. 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.
	What is the address formats of the WCF transport schemas? 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
	What is endpoint in WCF? 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 Endpoint is the fusion of Address, Contract and Binding.
	What is binding and how many types of bindings are there in WCF? 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. 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. TCP binding Offered by the NetTcpBinding class, this uses TCP for cross-machine communication on the intranet. It supports a variety of features, including reliability, transactions, and security, and is optimized for WCF-to-WCF communication. As a result, it requires both the client and the service to use WCF. Peer network binding Offered by the NetPeerTcpBinding class, this uses peer networking as a transport. The peer network-enabled client and services all subscribe to the same grid and broadcast messages to it. IPC binding Offered by the NetNamedPipeBinding class, this uses named pipes as a transport for same-machine 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. 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. Federated WS binding Offered by the WSFederationHttpBinding class, this is a specialization of the WS binding, offering support for federated security. 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. MSMQ binding Offered by the NetMsmqBinding class, this uses MSMQ for transport and is designed to offer support for disconnected queued calls. 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.
	Where we can host WCF services? Every WCF services must be hosted somewhere. There are three ways of hosting WCF services. They are 1. IISM 2. Self Hosting 3. WAS (Windows Activation Service)
	What is address in WCF and how many types of transport schemas are there in WCF? 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 (Inter-Process Communication over named pipes) MSMQ The sample address for above transport schema may look like http://localhost:81 http://localhost:81/MyService net.tcp://localhost:82/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipeService net.msmq://localhost/private/MyMsMqService net.msmq://localhost/MyMsMqService
	What is service and client in perspective of data communication? A service is a unit of functionality exposed to the world. The client of a service is merely the party consuming the service