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Learning WCF A Hands-on Guide

By Michele Leroux Bustamante
May 2007
Pages: 607
ISBN 10: 0-596-10162-7 | ISBN 13: 9780596101626
(Average of 4 Customer Reviews)

Description

This easy-to-use introduction to Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is ideal for developers who want to learn to build services on a company network or as part of an enterprise system. Built into Windows Vista and Longhorn, and available for Windows XP and Windows 2003, WCF provides a platform for service-oriented architecture (SOA) that enables secure and reliable communication among systems within an organization or across the Internet.
Full Description

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Featured customer reviews

Out-of-date,  August 29 2008
Submitted by Anonymous Reader   [Respond | View]

Overall this is a useful and well-written book. However, it is out-of-date in many respects. For instance, it does not reflect the many changes in WCF project for VS2008. Given the publication date this isn't the author's fault, but if you can find a more up-to-date book you might.

The link here to the author's example files is (at least at the moment) broken. This can be very annoying if you want to see things working without doing a lot of typing. Given at least one of the other reviews here, maybe I shouldn't count on them all working anyway.



Love it and hate it!,  August 26 2008
Submitted by Anonymous Reader   [Respond | View]

I'm an experienced C++/MFC programmer that is new to C# and .NET. I needed to come up to speed on WCF and after reading reviews on amazon.com and examing the available titles for WCF in the local B&N superstore, I settled on this one.

The main feature that sold me on this book is the labs. That is what I hate most about this book. After the first one or 2 labs you need the starter files to do the lab. I don't understand why everytime I open up one of the downloaded lab/sample files it loads up with .NET Framework 2.0. I thought WCF didn't come to be until .NET 3.0. It took me a long time to remember to convert the .NET framework version to v 3.5 when starting a lab.

In addition, a lot of the labs won't run. I get exceptions. the completed labs (at least the ones I've tried) have all compiled and run. when I encounter a lab that won't compile or run, I compare it to the completed lab file by file and very often I can't find any differences except that the completed labs will run and the ones that started from the starte files won't.

I think the info in the book is good but is no better or worse than I'd seen in other WCF titles.

I bought it because of the labs and that is the books weakest feature.

If all the labs using the starter files worked as expected, I would give this book a 5. However, I was torn between a 2 and a 3 and I decided to go with a 3.

Ira Idelson


Good place to start with WCF,  February 11 2008
Submitted by David Yack   [Respond | View]

WCF represents a bold step to unify a number of previous concepts for distributed messaging. In Learning WCF, Michelle takes on the challenging task of explaining WCF. It is a challenging task because on the outside WCF is a simple concept, a unified way to expose and interact with one or more loosely coupled services. As you dive beyond the simple concept, you begin to learn the mechanics of how all the pieces work together. In Learning WCF, it walks you through from the basics of the Hello WCF example more complex examples using WCF.

Learning WCF includes complete discussions on how to define your service contracts and data serialization. While from a consumer or service point of view protocols should be transparent, from an implementer point of view, it is important to understand the inner workings and Learning WCF highlights these in the right level of detail. After reading the book, you feel that you’ve got a good idea of the protocols but don’t feel like you just read the protocol specification.

Learning WCF integrates into most of the chapters labs that help demonstrate and explain the concepts of that chapter. Each of the labs are used as a way to more clearly illustrate and highlight tips for the topic being discussed. By having the labs integrated into the book, Learning WCF is a great resource for quickly getting your hands around WCF.

Today the pace of change for developers is amazing and keeping up can be a daunting task. Learning WCF is a book I would recommend for getting your hands around WCF and to keep on your bookshelf to reference as you begin to use WCF with your projects. WCF is a key architecture change in how Microsoft Developers do distributed messaging and one that as developers or architects we cannot ignore.

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• Table of Contents
• Index
• Sample Chapter
• Author's Example Files
• Author's Media File Examples
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