What are WCF Service Endpoints? Explain.

Answer

For Windows Communication Foundation services to be consumed, it’s necessary that it must be exposed; Clients need information about service to communicate with it. This is where service endpoints play their role. Client uses endpoint to communicate with WCF Service. A WCF service endpoint has three basic elements i.e. Address, Binding and Contract.

• Address: It defines “WHERE”. Address is the URL that identifies the location of the service.
• Binding: It defines “HOW”. Binding defines how the service can be accessed.
• Contract: It defines “WHAT”. Contract identifies what is exposed by the service.

A WCF Service can have multiple endpoints configured to accommodate different clients, for example, one client may be using HTTP while other configured to communicate over TCP.