CODEWITHSUNDEEP
authenticationowinidentitywifmiddleware
Sivalingaamorthy
Sivalingaamorthy

Reputation: 1101

WIF (Windows Identity Foundation) is still relevant?

Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) is around for a while, may be 5 to 7 years or more!, now Microsoft made WIF part of .net framework (4.5) itself. As we know WIF is a middleware for building identity aware applications.

As the trend on the web technology is changing, we have now need to incorporate multiple other identity providers (Google, Facebook etc.), in our application.

Now the industry got other Middleware technologies like OWIN, ASP.NET Identity etc.,

My Question,

Is still the WIF relevant and do we need to consider using it for new projects?

Or

Do we need to implement OWIN as alternative middleware? (As I understand Microsoft is betting on OWIN / KATANA moving forward).

Please share your thoughts.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 1856

Answers (3)

Brent Schmaltz
Brent Schmaltz

Reputation: 1161

Also consider we have moved some of the functionality of WIF into an open source project we refer to as Wilson. You can check it out here: https://github.com/AzureAD/azure-activedirectory-identitymodel-extensions-for-dotnet

Upvotes: 1

rbrayb
rbrayb

Reputation: 46755

Totally agree with @vibronet but to answer the question - yes - still relevant.

There's a ton of WIF out there - I support lots of customers who still use it.

OWIN is easier to use but the nice thing about WIF is that everything is in the web.config so the details are more explicit and easier to change. However, that comes at the cost of a fairly steep learning curve.

Refer: OWIN : Differences with WIF and WIF : Wrappers around protocols.

As per the links:

"You can think of OWIN as MVC and WIF as Forms. Forms are still supported but all the new whizzy features and all the code samples relate to MVC.

It's important to note the neither OWIN nor WIF are protocols - they are the wrappers around the protocols. The protocols underneath both are identical."

Upvotes: 2

vibronet
vibronet

Reputation: 7394

For new projects I highly recommend considering Katana and ASP.NET 5 OWIN middleware. WIF remains supported as part of the .NET framework, however we stopped adding new features long ago - all the innovation has been poured in Katana and OWIN middleware in general. Also, we like to think that the OWIN middleware is significantly easier to use :) Again, if your project has legacy aspects that impose the use of WIF, you can go ahead knowing we'll support you: but if you have any chance of choosing, the OWIN middleware is the best path moving forward.

Upvotes: 5

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