August 20th, 2007

The WCF subset supported by NetCF

Andrew Arnott
Principal Software Engineer

[Updated: 21Nov07 to clarify that custom headers are supported, but not in NetCFSvcUtil proxy generation]
[Updated: 27Aug07 to correct Gzip sample, and clarify on transports & extensibility]
[Updated: 23Aug07 to add SecurityAlgorithmSuite enumerable]

Many people have been asking about what subset of .NET 3.0’s Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) will be supported by the .NET Compact Framework 3.5.  Well, here is a table I put together with the answer to that question:

Feature

Desktop WCF

Compact WCF

Bindings:    
· BasicHttpBinding Yes Yes
· CustomBinding Yes Yes
· WindowsMobileMailBinding N/A Yes
· ExchangeWebServiceMailBinding Yes, via NetCF install Yes
Formatters:    
· SoapFormatter Yes Yes
· BinaryFormatter Yes No
Encoders:    
· TextMessageEncoder Yes Yes
· BinaryMessageEncodingBindingElement Yes No
· MTOMEncoder Yes No
· GzipEncoder Sample available Sample available
Transports:    
· HttpTransportBindingElement Yes Yes
· HttpsTransportBindingElement Yes Yes
· MailTransportBindingElement Yes, via NetCF install Yes
· MsmqTransportBindingElement Yes No
· TcpTransportBindingElement Yes No
· (other transports) Yes No
XmlDictionaryReader/Writer Yes Yes; stub around XmlTextReader/Writer
DataContractSerializer Yes No; but can be wire-compatible with DCS via XmlSerializer
Service proxy generation Yes; via SvcUtil.exe Yes; via NetCFSvcUtil.exe, not integrated into VS2008
· Non-HTTP transports in generated proxies Yes Not built-in
· Custom headers in generated proxies Yes Not built-in
WS-Addressing Yes Yes
WS-Security message level security    
· X.509 Yes Yes
· Username/password Yes No
· SecurityAlgorithmSuite.Basic256Rsa15 Yes Yes
· SecurityAlgorithmSuite.Basic256 Yes No
WS-ReliableMessaging Yes No
Patterns    
· Service model Yes No
· Message layer programming Yes Yes
· Buffered messages Yes Yes
· Streaming messages Yes No
· Endpoint descriptions in .config files Yes No
Channel extensibility Yes Yes
Security channel extensibility Yes No

Author

Andrew Arnott
Principal Software Engineer

Principal Software Engineer and OSS contributor. Visual Studio Platform.

0 comments

Discussion are closed.

Feedback