Difference between Webservice and WCF?

Question

Is there any difference between

1. Webservice and WCF
2. WCF and WCF RIA Data Services

it seems to be the same.

Answer 1

Asp.net web services are homogenous.
Asp.net web services can use only HTTP chanenel.
Not supports msmq and tcp binding...


WCF is flexible because its services can be hosted in 
different types of applications. The following lists 
several common scenarios for hosting WCF services:
IIS
WAS
Self-hosting
Managed Windows Service

WCF = Web services + .Net Remoting + MSMQ + (COM+)

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/webservices/WCFVSWebService/WCFVsWebService.pdf

Answer 2

A Web Service is programmable application logic accessible via standard Web protocols. One of these Web protocols is the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP). SOAP is a W3C submitted note (as of May 2000) that uses standards based technologies (XML for data description and HTTP for transport) to encode and transmit application data.

Consumers of a Web Service do not need to know anything about the platform, object model, or programming language used to implement the service; they only need to understand how to send and receive SOAP messages (HTTP and XML).

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WCF Service

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework for building service-oriented applications. Using WCF, you can send data as asynchronous messages from one service endpoint to another. A service endpoint can be part of a continuously available service hosted by IIS, or it can be a service hosted in an application. An endpoint can be a client of a service that requests data from a service endpoint. The messages can be as simple as a single character or word sent as XML, or as complex as a stream of binary data.

Check this Link

Answer 3

There are quite a difference between WCF and Web Service mostly in performance and security, also a flexibility and portability. 10 most important differences are listed right: HERE take a look!