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

Chapter 6. Understanding and Programming WCF Contracts

This chapter discusses the last letter in the Windows Communication Foundation alphabet. Chapter 4 discussed the first letter in the WCF alphabet, letter "A," covering the topic of addresses. Chapter 5 covered the second letter, "B," discussing the topic of WCF bindings. This chapter discusses the final letter, "C," and talks about the very important topic of contracts.

The "ABCs" of Windows Communication Foundation help you easily understand the concepts and components that make up a WCF service. Contracts are vital to WCF services and so this chapter discusses WCF contracts and provides some examples of how to define and program them.

All of the examples you have seen and worked on up until now have used and implemented contacts. One of the big things to consider when writing a book is how to lay things out and talk about topics in a way and order that makes sense. This applies to WCF just as easily because as you have seen when building a service, you can start with almost any aspect of it. Chapter 4 just as easily could have discussed contracts and waited until this chapter to discuss addresses.

Regardless of the order, hopefully you have started to get an idea of what these contracts do, but if you haven't this chapter will help you better understand the different types of contracts.

With that, this chapter discusses the following:

• The types of WCF contracts

• How to define the different types of contracts

• Examples of WCF contracts ...