Is there any practical way/reason to use WCF on a small website?

[DaveJ]

I just got a new job (yay!) and it starts in 3 weeks, so I wanted to get more experience using WCF before I walk in the door.

I have a few website I've created on my own time, including a gallery type site, and an eCommerce type site. But I can't think of any way WCF could be useful. Is there any plugin or something that requires the use of WCF? Say, a comments component that might use WCF, or a way to grab email contacts, or anything that uses WCF outside of a B2B setting?

If not, I guess I can just have my two sites talk to one another using WFC... I guess that might work....

[ChromeFoundry]

1. Host WCF in a service

This way you don't need IIS. Your service could be as simple as basic calculator functions or data from an XSD. You can call your service from a console app, windows form, asp.net or even jQuery. So many options.

[DaveJ]

5. I'm using a web host

I like to learn by creating something on my own websites that can serve some goal, basically, it's like I always need to be doing 2 things at once. So if I host a WCF service on one of my sites, and consume it on another one, that would mean I'm learning WCF right?

I was just wondering if there was anything out there that provides data that depends on the consumer having WCF? Like connecting to get a user's microsoft contact list or something? (with their permission of course) I'd just like to have a practical reason to use it.

Otherwise, maybe I'll have my ecommerce site send products info to my gallery site. That way I can get experiences creating both ends.

[Recursion]

2. I think that's the only native WSDL provider in the stack

So if you need WSDL for any service definition, you have to pull in all of WCF. Of course a small custom site probably doesn't need WSDL, but people love scalability nowadays, even for stuff that will never have to scale.

[DaveJ]

3. Thanks for the additional perspective

I've been using web services with asmx extensions up until now. Since I've only done it that way, I don't even know what to call it. SOAP? Anyway, I'll be looking into WSDL now as I begin.

I guess I was phrasing my question poorly, also. I was wondering if there are any external providers of services that require WCF to communicate with them. I was listening to a podcast and got the impression Google lets a site import contacts and works well with Microsoft's WCF technology. Something like that.

[Recursion]

4. I'm a Linux/BSD guy for the most part; I just remember that from my last .NET experience

We had plug-in X that relied on the existence of WSDL, so we had to have WCF. That's the basics that I remember.

[DaveJ]

6. I just like to learn by doing

I was just trying to come up with some practical way to use WCF.

It seems like WCF is Ms's plan to have B2B developers communicate with one another. Does that sound right? But I see nothing out there (public data sources) that are like, "hey if you want to connect to us use WCF this way...". That's what I was looking for I guess.