Question

A have a web-accessible (via basicHttpBinding) WCF service which I also want to access from other .NET services on the same machine with as higher performance as possible. I understand that the netNamedPipeBinding is ideal for this, but wonder what the best configuration would be given that I’m only even going to be communicating with other .NET processes.

For example, I needn’t necessarily use an encoding such as SOAP as this is perhaps too bulky and I don’t need the compatibility with any other clients other than a .NET client. I also don’t think I need any security.

What would be the best binding configuration for this purpose (or any other configurations for that matter)

Answer 1

As you have noted, the NetNamedPipeBinding binding is optimised for same-machine communication:

Provides a secure and reliable binding
that is optimized for on-machine
communication.

Ref. : System-Provided Bindings

In chapter one of Juval Lowy’s book, “Programming WCF Services”, he provides a useful decision-activity diagram for choosing the right binding:

“The first question you should ask
yourself is whether your service needs
to interact with non-WCF clients. If
the answer is yes, and if the client
is a legacy MSMQ client, choose the
MsmqIntegrationBinding that enables
your service to interoperate over MSMQ
with such a client. If you need to
interoperate with a non-WCF client and
that client expects basic web service
protocol (ASMX web services), choose
the BasicHttpBinding, which exposes
your WCF service to the outside world
as if it were an ASMX web service
(that is, a WSI-basic profile). The
downside is that you cannot take
advantage of most of the modern WS-*
protocols. However, if the non-WCF
client can understand these standards,
choose one of the WS bindings, such as
WSHttpBinding,
WSFederationHttpBinding, or
WSDualHttpBinding. If you can assume
that the client is a WCF client, yet
it requires offline or disconnected
interaction, choose the NetMsmqBinding
that uses MSMQ for transporting the
messages. If the client requires
connected communication, but could be
calling across machine boundaries,
choose the NetTcpBinding that
communicates over TCP. If the client
is on the same machine as the service,
choose the NetNamedPipeBinding that
uses named pipes to maximize
performance. You may fine-tune binding
selections based on additional
criteria such as the need for
callbacks (WSDualHttpBinding) or
federated security
(WSFederationHttpBinding).”