Question

Could you please tell what is the difference between a WCF client and a non-WCF client?

When I generate proxy of a WCF service using svcutil and put that in client, what is created – wcf client or non-wcf client?

When should I use WCF client and non-WCF Client?

Answer 1

If you have a WCF service, its services are available to potentially several types of clients – both .NET applications using WCF themselves, or other apps.

Basically, any WCF binding that start with net.... is a .NET specific binding – only other .NET apps with WCF can connect to those services and call their methods.

The bindings with basic.... or ws...... typically are interoperable, e.g. using only industry standards like SOAP and WS-* standards – those can be called from Java, Ruby, PHP – you name it. Any language/system with a SOAP stack can call such a service (provided you get the configuration right on both ends)

The webHttpBinding is another special case – it’s exposing it’s services over REST – which means anything with a HTTP stack (pretty much every computer system and more and more phones and devices, too) can call its methods.

As long as you are programming your stuff in .NET, always use the WCF client – it’s the easiest and the best if it’s available. If you need to call your WCF service from a PHP client, of course, then you have to use PHP technology and something that’s compatible between the two worlds….