Web services and WCF
A web service is not one single entity and consists of three distinct parts:
An endpoint, which is the URL (and related information) where client applications will find our service
A host environment, which in our case will be Azure
A service class, which is the code that implements the methods called by the client application
A web service endpoint is more than just a URL. An endpoint also includes:
The bindings, or communication and security protocols
The contract (or promise) that certain methods exist, how these methods should be called, and what the data will look like when returned
A simple way to remember the components of an endpoint is A/B/C, that is, address/bindings/contract.
Web services can fill many roles in our Azure applications – from serving as a simple way to place messages into a queue, to being a complete replacement for a data access layer in a web application (also known as a Service Oriented Architecture or SOA). In Azure, web services serve as...
