I’m still a great fan of WCF and all it brings with it. This was one of the best developments in the .NET world and made it easy to implement multi process software, distributed systems and SOA.
Why will it no longer be required?
Great open source frameworks.
source code SignalR : https://github.com/SignalR/SignalR
source code Web Api 2 : http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/
With these 2 frameworks, Microsoft has made WCF almost redundant. If I were to compare the WCF full feature set with Web Api 2 and SignalR, it would look something like this for me:
What’s WCF got that Web Api 2 and SignalR don’t have:
- WCF async persistent communication: WCF with MSMQ
- support for distributed transactions (via MSDTC)
- Named Pipes high performance communication (I would like a performance test here to see the difference)
- UDP
I’m probably missing a lot, but the new frameworks cover most of the use cases or requirements which would make me choose WCF in my architecture.
UPDATE June 2014
ODATA V4 will not be supported by WCF. Only Web API will support ODATA V4. WCF is starting to loss features now.
It was nice knowing WCF, now go and join Silverlight…
Links:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj823172.aspx
http://akhileshyadav.wordpress.com/2013/05/13/wcf-vs-asp-net-web-apis/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa480210.aspx
http://www.codeproject.com/Questions/558542/WhatplusisplusdifferenceplusbetweenplusWCFplusvspl
http://realworldsa.blogspot.ch/2011/09/today-microsoft-killed-net-good-bye-wcf.html
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/341414/WCF-or-ASP-NET-Web-APIs-My-two-cents-on-the-subjec
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456789(v=vs.110).aspx
http://mattmilner.com/Milner/Blog/post/2012/02/28/WebAPI-or-WCF.aspx
http://de.slideshare.net/adnanmasood/presentation-web-api-vs-wcf
Software Engineering 
I agree. I switched to Web API almost as soon as it got out.
Thanks for your comment. And SignalR covers most of what Web Api doesn’t support from WCF. (full-duplex communication was one of the main reasons for still using WCF but SignalR does this besser now.)
After using WCF on some projects I’ve seen Filip WOJCIESZYN presentation at Microsoft Tech Days in Basel and I was impressed from the simplicity of this framework. As Filip said about the KISS principle: ‘Keep it simple and standard’. And don’t forget to look at http://webapicontrib.github.io/.
I will switch my current project to WEB.Api 2.0. Thanks Damien.
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