What’s new in WCF 4.5

In part-1 of this WCF Tutorial series, we have gone through new features introduced in Windows Communication Foundation v3.5 and v4.0. In this part, we will highlight new features of WCF 4.5.

• Simplified Generated Configuration files, generated configuration file on client will only have non-default binding configuration. more…
• Validating WCF Configuration is now part of v4.5. While compiling if there are some validation errors with configuration file, it will be displayed as warnings in Visual Studio. more…
• WCF 4.5 support for Task-based Asynchronous programming model.
• Contract First Development is now supported. Only contract will be generated in service.cs, if we use SvcUtil.exe with “/ServiceContract” switch while generating proxy.
• ASP.NET Compatibility Mode changed to enable WCF service to participate in ASP.NET Pipeline just like ASMX services.
• Tooltip and intellisense support in Configuration files. more…
• XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas default values has been changed.
• v4.5 allows to create an endpoint that supports Multiple Authentication Types.
• Automatic HTTPS endpoints in IIS.
• Improvements in Streaming, support for real asynchronous streaming, no blockage of one thread per client as with previous versions.
• Support for UDP transport, using UDP one way messages are very fast.
• BasicHttpsBinding, new security configuration option.
• In order to have bidirectional communication with better performance like TCP, WebSocket is the right choice. WCF v4.5 introduces NetHttpBinding and NetHttpsBinding bindings for supporting WebSockets.
• Single WSDL Document, now we can create WSDL information in one file. more…

• IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) support means WCF Service can be called using IDN names by client.
• Compression support is now available for Binary Encoder in WCF 4.5 through CompressionFormat property.
• ChannelFactory Cache, WCF 4.5 now support for caching Channel Factories to reduce overhead associated while creating a ChannelFactory instance.
• WCF Service can be configured using config file or through code. In v4.5, configuration through code has been simplified by defining a public static method (i.e. configure) instead of creating a ServiceHostFactory.

In order to look for comparison with previous versions, please follow the link to WCF 3.5 and WCF 4.0