Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows® Communication Foundation

Chapter 2. Windows Communication Foundation Concepts

Chapter 1 gave a background of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) and built upon that foundation by introducing the topic of this book, Windows Communication Foundation. With that introduction out of the way, this chapter focuses on the main concepts of WCF.

Chapter 1 also spent a few pages discussing the architecture of WCF, which helped build a nice foundation for understanding how WCF is laid out and intricately put together, and how all those layers work together. For example, one of the layers discussed was the Messaging layer, which defines what formats and data exchange patterns can be used when communicating with services. The Service Runtime layer was also discussed, which specifies the behaviors of the service or endpoint.

This chapter goes into a bit more depth in discussing those components, so before diving into the nitty-gritty of WCF and starting to work with it, it would be helpful to understand the components and definitions that make up the basic and fundamental pieces of WCF and some of the basic concepts that make up WCF. In other words, in order to "walk-the-walk" of WCF, you need to "talk-the-talk" of WCF. To understand WCF, it helps to understand messages and services, their behaviors, and other related aspects. By the time you finish this chapter, you will be able to explain what a message is, what a service is and how it works, and how they are related to endpoints.

Therefore, this chapter defines and discusses ...