Multi-tiered applications are sometimes deployed over distributed network nodes and need computer-to-computer connections and remote software calls. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is the .NET 3.0 framework for building service-oriented applications. One of its major features is the location-transparency. In other words, a WCF service can be invoked from anywhere in the network by any piece of software that knows about the endpoint to reach and the contract to fulfill. WCF services are more general than Web services.
