This easy-to-use introduction to the Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation removes the complexity of using the API by providing detailed answers, explanations, and code samples to the most common questions asked by software developers.

Written by Microsoft software legend Juval Lowy, Programming WCF Services is the authoritative introduction to Microsoft's new, and some say revolutionary, unified platform for developing service-oriented applications (SOA) on Windows. Relentlessly practical, the book delivers insight, not documentation, to teach developers what they need to know to build the next generation of SOAs. After explaining the advantages of service-orientation for application design and teaching the basics of how to develop SOAs using WCF, the book shows how you can take advantage of built-in features such as service hosting, instance management, asynchronous calls, synchronization, reliability, transaction management, disconnected queued calls and security to build best in class applications. Programming WCF Services focuses on the rationale behind particular design decisions, often shedding light on poorly-documented and little-understood aspects of SOA development. Developers and architects will learn not only the "how" of WCF programming, but also relevant design guidelines, best practices, and pitfalls. Original techniques and utilities provided by the author throughout the book go well beyond anything that can be found in conventional sources. Based on experience and insight gained while taking part in the strategic design of WCF and working with the team that implemented it, Programming WCF Services provides experienced working professionals with the definitive work on WCF. Not only will this book make you a WCF expert, it will make you a better software engineer. It's the Rosetta Stone of WCF.

“Whether this is the first time or the fifty-first time you’re using WCF, you’ll learn something new by reading this book.” --Nicholas Allen, Program Manager, Web Services, Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is the easiest way to produce and consume Web services on the Microsoft platform. With .NET 3.5, WCF has been extensively revamped--and Visual Studio 2008 gives developers powerful new tools for utilizing it. Essential Windows Communication Foundation shows developers exactly how to make the most of WCF with .NET 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. Drawing on extensive experience working with early adopters, three Microsoft insiders systematically address the topics developers ask about WCF. The authors approach each subject with practical advice and present best practices, tips, and tricks for solving problems. Throughout, you’ll find detailed explanations, solutions for the “pain points” of WCF development, and an extensive collection of reusable code examples. Coverage includes Using WCF contracts to define complex structures and interfaces Understanding WCF’s channel stacks and channel model architecture Configuring the WCF communication stack to use only the protocols you need Using standard and custom service behaviors to manage concurrency, instances, transactions, and more Serializing data from .NET types to XML Infosets and representing Infosets “on the wire” Hosting WCF services via IIS, managed .NET applications, and Windows Activation Services WCF security, in depth: authentication; transport and message-level security; and Internet and intranet scenarios Improving reliability: exception handling, diagnostics, and more Workflow services: new integration points between WCF 3.5 and Windows Workflow Foundation Building client-to-client, peer network-based applications Utilizing WCF for non-SOAP Web services: AJAX and JSON examples and .NET 3.5 hosting classes Microsoft’s Steve Resnick, Richard Crane, and Chris Bowen are technology experts at the Microsoft Technology Center in Boston. They specialize in helping customers improve their technical agility by applying WCF and related technologies. Resnick has specialized in Internet technologies and distributed computing at Microsoft since 1995. He is a frequent speaker at Microsoft events and is now technology director for the U.S. Microsoft Technology Centers. Crane has more than 15 years of experience in senior software development roles. He specializes in large-scale Web sites, distributed computing, transactional systems, and performance analysis. Bowen has been an architect and developer for more than 15 years at companies such as Monster.com and Staples and is co-author of Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System. Foreword xxv Preface xxvii Chapter 1: Basics 1 Chapter 2: Contracts 33 Chapter 3: Channels 91 Chapter 4: Bindings 111 Chapter 5: Behaviors 181 Chapter 6: Serialization and Encoding 241 Chapter 7: Hosting 287 Chapter 8: Security 315 Chapter 9: Diagnostics 375 Chapter 10: Exception Handling 403 Chapter 11: Workflow Services 423 Chapter 12: Peer Networking 459 Chapter 13: Programmable Web 503 Appendix: Advanced Topics 537 Index 553

A guide to architecting, designing, and building distributed applications with Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is the .NET technology that is used to build service-oriented applications, exchange messages in various communication scenarios, and run workflows. This guide enables developers to create state-of-the-art applications using this technology. Written by a team of Microsoft MVPs and WCF experts, this book explains how the pieces of WCF 4.0 build on each other to provide a comprehensive framework to support distributed enterprise applications. Experienced developers will learn both theory and practical application using the familiar Wrox approach. .NET developers will learn to design services, create a hosting environment with Dublin, build cloud-based integrations, and much more. Coverage Includes: Design Principles and Patterns Service Contracts and Data Contracts Bindings Clients Instancing Workflow Services Understanding WCF Security WCF Security in Action Federated Authentication in WCF Windows Azure Platform AppFabric Creating a SOA Case Creating the Communication and Integration Case Creating the Business Process Hosting

Built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and around the Web Services architecture, Windows Communication Foundation (formerly known as Indigo ) is a technology for building and running connected systems providing reliable and secure transactional messaging.This book, targeted for developers currently developing applications using the .NET Framework and related technologies, will discuss the new Windows Communication Foundation technologies available from Microsoft, the next generation of configuring and deploying network-distributed services. Some of the topics covered include:· Addresses· Binding· Contracts· Clients· Services· Security· Deployment· Management· Hosting

Pro WCF 4.0: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation is a complete guide to Windows Communication Foundation from the service-oriented architecture (SOA) perspective, showing you why WCF is important to service-oriented architecture and development. This book provides deep insight into the functionality of WCF, which shipped with .NET 4.0-like service discovery, routing service, simplified configuration, and other advanced features. Included in this title are informative examples that will aid the reader in understanding and implementing these important additions. This book also covers the unified programming model, reliable messaging, security, and the peer-to-peer programming model. You'll also learn how to move your current .NET remoting and web service applications to WCF, and how to integrate those applications with WCF 4. This book offers genuine insight into solving real enterprise problems using WCF and .NET 4.0.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s dynamic technology for allowing autonomous software to communicate. Superseding earlier technologies such as COM/DCOM, .NET Remoting, ASP.NET Web Services, and the Web Services Enhancements for .NET, WCF provides a single solution that is designed to always be the best way to exchange data among software entities. It also provides the infrastructure for developing the next generation of Web Services, with support for the WS-* family of specifications, and a new serialization system for enhanced performance. In the 3.5 release, WCF has been expanded to include support for REST, JSON, and Syndication (RSS and Atom) services, further broadening the possibilities for what can be done. For information technology professionals, WCF supplies an impressive array of administration tools that enterprises and software vendors can use to reduce the cost of ownership of their solutions without writing a single line of code. Most important, WCF delivers on the promise of model-driven software development with the new software factory approach, by which one can iteratively design solutions in a modeling language and generate executables from lower-level class libraries. Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 Unleashed is designed to be the essential resource for software developers and architects working with WCF. The book guides readers through a conceptual understanding of all the facilities of WCF and provides step-by-step guides to applying the technology to practical problems. As evangelists at Microsoft for WCF, WF, and CardSpace, Craig McMurtry, Marc Mercuri, Nigel Watling, and Matt Winkler are uniquely positioned to write this book. They had access to the development team and to the product as it was being built. Their work with enterprises and outside software vendors has given them unique insight into how others see the software, how they want to apply it, and the challenges they face in doing so. --Gives you nearly 100 best practices for programming with WCF --Provides detailed coverage of how to version services that you will not find anywhere else --Delves into using WCF together with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows CardSpace --Provides detailed coverage of the new high-performance data contract serializer for .NET --Walks you through creating secure, reliable, transacted messaging, and how to understand the available options --Introduces you to federated, claims-based security and shows you how to incorporate SAML and WS-Trust security token services into your architecture --Provides step-by-step instructions for how to customize every aspect of WCF --Shows you how to add behaviors, communication channels, message encoders, and transports --Presents options for implementing publish/subscribe solutions --Gives clear guidance on peer-to-peer communications with WCF

Your hands-on, step-by-step guide to building connected, service-oriented applications. Teach yourself the essentials of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) 4 -- one step at a time. With this practical, learn-by-doing tutorial, you get the clear guidance and hands-on examples you need to begin creating Web services for robust Windows-based business applications. Discover how to: Build and host SOAP and REST services Maintain service contracts and data contracts Control configuration and communications programmatically Implement message encryption, authentication, and authorization Manage identity with Windows CardSpace Begin working with Windows Workflow Foundation to create scalable and durable business services Implement service discovery and message routing Optimize performance with service throttling, encoding, and streaming Integrate WCF services with ASP.NET clients and enterprise services components Your Step by Step digital content includes: Practice exercises Downloadable code samples Fully searchable online edition of the book -- with unlimited access on the Web

If you are a C#, VB.NET, or C++ developer and want to get started with WCF and Entity Framework, then this book is for you. Competence in Entity Framework will be needed to follow the examples in the book, but experience in creating WCF services using Entity Framework is not necessary. Developers and architects evaluating SOA implementation technologies for their company will find this book useful.

This book is a step-by-step tutorial to guide you through learning WCF and LINQ to Entities. You will be guided to create five WCF and LINQ solutions from scratch, of which three are multi-tiered real-world WCF service solutions, so you will not only be reading, but also be coding through the book, to gain practical experience of WCF and LINQ to Entities. Various test clients will be associated with each solution and these solutions can be built and run independently of other solutions. Clear step-by-step instructions and relevant screenshots will make sure you won't get lost in the new world of WCF and LINQ to Entities. Configuration files, host applications, test clients, and WCF services for each solution will also be available for download for you to examine, modify, and debug from the outside in. The book focuses on the essentials of using WCF and LINQ to Entities, rather than providing a reference to every single possibility. It leaves the reference material online where it belongs, and concentrates instead on practical examples, code, and advice. This book is for C# and C++ developers who are eager to get started with WCF and LINQ to Entities, and want a book that is practical and rich with examples from the very beginning. Developers and architects evaluating SOA implementation technologies for their company will find this book particularly useful because it gets you started with Microsoft's tools for SOA and shows you how to customize our examples for your prototypes. This book presumes basic knowledge of C# or C++. Previous experience with Visual Studio will be helpful but is not required, as detailed instructions are given throughout the book.