From the previous chapter, we know that a WCF service can be hosted within IIS Express. This method is the most convenient way to host a WCF service during the development stage.
Besides IIS Express, a WCF service can also be hosted in a managed application, such as a command-line application, a Windows service application, or on a website. This method is often referred to as a self-hosting method, as you have to write your own hosting application.
In addition to IIS Express and a managed application, IIS can also be used to host a WCF service. In fact, this is the most popular way to host a WCF service in production and, as we will learn soon in this chapter, you will benefit a lot from this hosting method.
In this chapter, we will explore all these options one by one in detail, except IIS Express, which has been covered in the previous chapter.
However, before we start exploring these options, I would like to point out some more options to host a WCF service: