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.

How to define a service as REST based service in WCF?

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); }

By adding the WebGetAttribute, we can define a service as REST based service that can be accessible using HTTP GET operation.

What is the address formats of the WCF transport schemas?

[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