Microsoft® Windows® Communication Foundation Step by Step

Modifying a Data Contract

The methods in a service contract can take parameters and return values. The data for these parameters and return values is included in the SOAP messages that pass between the client application and service. SOAP messages encode data values as tagged XML text. The WCF runtime uses the built-in XML serialization features of the .NET Framework to serialize and deserialize primitive .NET Framework data types, such as integers, real numbers, or even strings. For more complex structured types, the service must specify the exact format for the serialized representation; there could be several ways to depict the same structured data as XML. You define structured types by using data contracts. The WCF runtime can then use data ...