What is the relationship between WCF, Rest and SOAP?

Question

What is the relationship between WCF and REST&SOAP? Is WCF based on one of those technologies (REST or SOAP) or it is a separate technology?

Answer 1

Although, this question has got several good answers, just putting in my 2-cents, in an attempt for newbies to WCF vs SOAP vs REST-full services, to make it a bit easier for them to understand.

We get confusions, whether WCF supports both REST and SOAP ? And, normally, we just see generic definitions about SOAP and REST. So , we need something from Microsoft to make us feel the truth : ) So here's a screenshot from Microsoft MSDN :

So, yes, WCF supports both .

In context with OP:

• SOAP services:
  in WCF programming model support interoperability between systems that are built with Java, other platforms, and those that use messaging standards that are supported by Microsoft®. These also support transports such as HTTP, TCP, named pipes, and MSMQ.
  
• Web HTTP services :
  in WCF programming model supports REST. [Source: MSDN]