Visual Studio® 2010 and .NET 4, Six-in-one

Chapter 9. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Based on the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework used to design applications with the capability to inter-communicate. WCF was initially named "Indigo," and was introduced as part of .NET Framework 3.0 in 2006. According to MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms735119.aspx.), "Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft's unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments."

SOA is an architectural paradigm where you have a collection of loosely coupled and extensible services, with each service having the capability to be modified independently of one another in such a way that the integration of the services remains intact. WCF is a framework from Microsoft that facilitates designing and developing SOA applications within the managed environment.

This chapter takes a look at how WCF fits into the greater .NET toolset, as well as the basics of SOA using WCF. In this chapter, you will learn how to implement a WCF service using Visual Studio 2010.

Before digging into the details, let's do a quick review of WCF in comparison to ASMX Web Services.

WCF VERSUS ASMX WEB SERVICES

One of the most common descriptions of WCF is to say that it is web service. Although you can use WCF to create web services that match ...