WCF Tutorial

Part 30 Advantages and disadvantages of hosting wcf service in iis

Link for code samples used in the demo
http://csharp-video-tutorials.blogspot.com/2014/02/part-30-advantages-and-disadvantages-of_12.html

Link for all dot net and sql server video tutorial playlists
http://www.youtube.com/user/kudvenkat/playlists

In this video we will discuss, the Advantages and disadvantages of hosting wcf service in IIS. This is continuation to Part 29. Please watch Part 29, before proceeding.

Advantages:
1. No code required to host the service: The ServiceHost directive in .svc file is responsible for creating an instance of ServiceHost when required. There is no need to write code to instantiate and start ServiceHost, as is the case with self hosting.

2. Automatic message based activation: IIS provides automatic message based activation. This means that the service can be activated on demand. When a message arrives at the service, it then launches itself and fulfils the request. In case of self hosting, the service should always be running.

3. Automatic process recycling: IIS provides the capability of automatic process recycling, if the process is not healthy and if it’s taking a long time to service the requests. We don’t get automatic process recycling with self hosting.

Disadvantages:
Hosting WCF service in IIS 5.1 and IIS 6.0 is limited to HTTP communication only. This means we can only use HTTP related bindings.