Chapter 11: Deploying Web Services with WCF | 301 |
call into XML and send the XML data via HTTP to the WCF service. The WCF service understands the XML because it was the WCF service that told the Java application what format to put the XML into. If you’re curious about the format, it’s called Web Service Description Language (WSDL), which is a contract (or interface) that tells callers how to package the XML and what operations (such as GetWeather) can be called on the Web service. There’s more that the WSDL does behind the scenes, but the primary point to make is that clients, such as the Java app, use the WSDL to package their XML and send it to the WCF service. The service translates the XML into a call to a method, runs the method, packages the results back into XML (as defined by the WSDL), and sends the results back to the Java application. Essentially, a WCF service uses open standards so that any other system can use those same open standards to communicate.
This chapter will show you how VS helps you create WCF services, how to create a client that communicates with a WCF service, and how to deploy WCF services. The deployment information in this chapter is also useful to know for other types of Web applications, such as ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight. Let’s start off with creating a WCF project.
Starting a WCF Project
To create a new WCF project, press
