SOAP/HTTP vs SOAP/TCP

Recently I had to check out SOAP/HTTP and SOAP/TCP as solutions to a WCF service. I know SOAP/TCP was not there in previous WCF versions. However, after analyzing WCF 4.0, I came to know that it is still not there but can be implemented only thru custom binding.

Tabulated below are some key differentiators on SOAP/HTTP vs SOAP/TCP

SOAP/HTTP	SOAP/TCP
Not connection-based	Connection-based
Stateless	Stateful
Request-Response delivery mechanism	Supports fast infoset
Need to use WSReliableMessaging for reliable data delivery	Reliable data delivery,
	Provides duplex communication
Slowest of the three	Fastest of the three, since only the new/changed data packets are transmitted
OOTB WCF binding available	Custom binding to be created, third-party component available

Web Service Software Factory for WCF

The second version of the Web Service Software Factory has released. This new release has everything the first one had with the addition of loads of new stuff specifically for building WCF Web services using VS 2005. Though this was released in Jan itself, I couldn't peep into it for quite sometime.

The new features help you apply message-level security, construct services from WSDL/XSD, perform design-time code/config analysis, apply message validation, and migrate from ASMX services. If you're building WCF Web services, you would surely want to check this out at Web Service Software Factory.