Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, Fifth Edition

25.15. Designing WCF Data Contracts

This chapter's final example shows you how to construct WCF data contracts. The previous WCF services defined simple methods that operate on primitive CLR data types. When you use of any of the HTTP binding types (e.g., basicHttpBinding and wsHttpBinding), incoming and outgoing simple data types are automatically formatted into XML elements. On a related note, if you use a TCP-based binding (such as netTcpBinding), the parameters and return values of simple data types are transmitted using a compact binary format.

NOTE

The WCF runtime will also automatically encode any type marked with the [Serializable] attribute; however, this is not the preferred way to define WCF contracts, and it is only included for ...