What is the difference between an asp.net web method and a wcf service?

Question

I\'m new to .Net and do not understand the difference. Can someone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

They are two different frameworks for writing services. WCF is generally more flexible and provides configurable options for what protocols are used, how the service is hosted and a variety of security options. ASMX offers SOAP based services. Generally WCF is also more performant. In general ASMX is easier to use and generally has less of a learning curve.

Here is a MSDN forum discussion on the topic. Here are the getting started pages for ASMX and WCF.