Looking back to the days when the ASP.NET ASMX-based XML web service was widely used for building service-oriented applications, it was the easiest way to create a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol)-based service that could be used by both .NET applications and non-.NET applications. It was available only over HTTP.
In the late 2007, Microsoft released Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). WCF was and is, even now, a powerful technology for building SOA-based applications. It was a giant leap in the world of the Microsoft .NET world.
WCF was flexible enough to be configured as an HTTP service, remoting service, TCP service, and so on. Using the contracts of WCF, we would keep the entire business logic code base the same, and expose the service as HTTP-based or non-HTTP-based via SOAP/non SOAP.
Until 2010, the ASMX-based XML web service...