How do I know if I need "WCF HTTP Activation" in my application?

Question

I have an MVC3 ASP.NET application. If I iterate over the list of loaded IHttpModules I see that there's ServiceModel listed which is a module for Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation.

I suspect I don't need this module and consider having this module removed.

How do I know if I really need it?

Answer 1

My first response would be: try it and see what happens. The other way around, when you search the web for "install WCF HTTP Activation handler" (because you would like to know what people do want to install it for), where you will find explanations like here:

After installing Windows 7 and IIS, when I attempt to browse to a WCF service I get the following error message: HTTP Error 404.3 – Not Found

HTTP Error 404.3 – Not Found The page you are requesting cannot be served because of the extension configuration. If the page is a script, add a handler. If the file should be downloaded, add a MIME map.

This error message occurs when “Windows Communication Foundation HTTP Activation” is not explicitly set in the Control Panel.

So, people use the handler to host WCF services in IIS. If you don't do that, you can simply remove the handler.