An Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)
WCF Overview
1.0 What  Is WCF?
WCF stands for Windows Communication Foundations.
WCF  combines the functionality from ASP.NET Web Services, .NET Remoting, Message  Queuing and Enterprise Services.
WCF provides the following features,  
-  Hosting For Component & Services
 WCF Service can be hosted in ASP.NET Runtime, a Windows Service, a COM+ Component or just a Windows form application for peer-to-peer computing.
-  Declarative Behavior
 Similar to ASP.NET Web Services, attributes can be used for WCF Services e.g. ServiceContract(), OperationContract, DataContract and DataMember
-  Communication Channels
 Similar to .NET Remoting WCF Services are flexible in changing the channels. WCF offers multiple channels to communicate using HTTP, TCP or an IPC channel.
-  Security
-  Extensibility
2.0 Understanding WCF-
These days we are creating  the software/application which should be capable of communication with other  applications as well. Communication with other application simply means either  sharing/exchanging the data or the sharing the logic.
Now, this  communication may be of two kinds  
-  Over Intranet (Same Network/Platform i.e. .NET Application to .NET Application)
-  Over Internet (Cross Platform may be ASP.NET to J2EE Application)
Suppose we are writing a .NET Software with n-tier architecture in  which Win Form Client needs to communicate with Server in the same network. In  such case we may go for .NET Remoting for communication between Client and  Server.
Suppose, once our software mentioned above is ready, we need to  expose some business logic to another J2EE application. This J2EE application is  supposed to use our .NET Application's logic over WWW. In such case we will have  to write new ASP.NET Web Service to expose the logic.
Picture shown  below shows the limitation of .NET Remoting
 
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