Differences Between ASMX and WCF Services

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Some differences between ASMX and WCF services are subtle and some differences between them are not subtle. The purpose of this section is to identify many of these differences and to provide guidance for how to handle them when preparing for, or when performing, migration. ASMX provides a very successful baseline for services, and WCF extends those capabilities for the next generation of services.

There are differences between ASMX and WCF, but it is important to also understand that WCF supports the same capabilities that ASMX provides. For example, you can use message types, XmlSerialization, custom SOAP headers, and Web Service Enhancements (WSE) in a WCF service. The remainder of this section describes some of these items; it also describes other areas that represent differences between ASMX and WCF.

The following subtopics describe the major differences between ASMX and WCF services:

• Message Structure and Serialization
• SOAP Extensions
• Transport Protocols
• Security
• Exception Handling
• State Management