Programming WCF Services

WCF is one of the four major application programming interfaces introduced as part of .NET Framework 3.0. With its enormous power and flexibility, WCF has a very complex and multilayered architecture. After reading some nice overviews on WCF and even writing some simple code with out-of-box facilities provided by WCF, one may get a misleading impression of it being simple and straightforward. Once to delve into real world programming, you would be exposed to huge number of issues and complexities that in most cases may not be overcome without thorough understanding of the subject. Juval Lowy's book does an outstanding job ob systematically and thoroughly uncovering practically all aspects of WCF programming. Not only it presents a simple to understand architectural picture of WCF in general and various architectural and functional subsystems, but also abandons with practical and thorough explanations of the details of virtually all aspects of WCF. This book is not a beginner book. For starting with WCF I would recommend Michele Bustamante's book "Learning WCF". Lowy's book is a thorough reference on WCF that soon becomes your primary source of information. I would like also to note that it does not seem to be the intent of the book to reflect on all internal plumbing of WCF, which realistically needs lot of experimentation. You may find Justin Smith's book as a good supplement to Lowy's book on custom channels and behaviors.

I had only written a couple of WCF services before purchasing this book, and had survived by relying on samples found online. After purchasing this book, I no longer find myself looking for samples online. This book starts with the basics of WPF and makes them easy to understand. Then it proceeds into advanced topics such as message security, which had me puzzled until I read the chapter in this book. One of the things I really appreciate as a C# developer is the fact that almost every example in the book shows how to accomplish the given task in the .config file using the XML configuration elements, and also in pure C# code. Many examples I have seen in the MSDN or other documentation only deal with how to set up a client or server using the .config file which is not always practical.

This book is not for someone who knows a little WCF concept. Also it's not for the person who wants to find quick solution. After I brought this book, I was trying to understand how to build a WCF webservice, how to host it and how to call it, from the index I got the related sections, after I read them many times, I still don't know how to do it. I have to read other training material to understand it. It has no step by step instruction. It missed lot of steps. I'm dispointed with this book.

yah.. pretty much what the others are saying. First book i purchased on WCF was "Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation" and it wasn't all that interesting, rather a list of facts about wcf with some background leading up to it. this book is a typical oreilly read. concise, yet informative with clear examples in the text. Also, be sure to download the .net 3.0 SDK with samples library for WCF, AND the IDesign website for lots and lots of great examples. between those 2 you should have enough code to look at, and this book will fill in the blanks of what it all means.

Well, from what I can tell, the author knows his material. Unfortunately, the book is poorly written. The author simply doesn't write as well as Petzold, Richter and Sells do. He tends to "dive down" into advanced material without making it clear that he is doing so; this makes it difficult to get an overview of the material. I agree with the earlier reviewer who stated that one should read some _other_ book first to get an overview of the material. Maybe then, this book would be useful. It still seems poorly organized to me, though.

Tiene buenas explicaciones de las cosas nuevas de WCF. Se puede entender bien las funcionalidades y tiene ejemplos programaticos y declarativos (con xml config) para realizar casi todas las operaciones. Conviene comparlo conjuntamente con "Learning WCF" que tiene ejemplos practicos de los casos mas comunes. Me gusto.

This book is pretty comprehensive. I started learning WCF with the 15-part web series provided by Mrs. Bustamante that accompanies her book. Learning WCF: A Hands-on Guide I highly recommend her read if you are getting started. However, if you have some familiarity with WCF - this one will take you further. It has plenty of easy-to-understand code samples and a wonderful best practice section near the index. I have been able to incorporate things in this book with business - and that is what really counts.

I'm part of a middleware group and we are migrating to WCF. This book was just technical enough, concise and it has been very helpful in several cases. It's gotten me started and helped fill in the details where I needed it. Probably my favorite part, was the astute and very well reasoned description of Service-Orientation in Appendix A. You're not going to waste your time reading fluff like so many other books.

I have little doubt that, if not already, this will become the definitive guide to WCF. This is essentially Programming .NET components, but with the emphasis on WCF - something evident in the way that the early chapters apply the component oriented principles in his earlier book to service oriented architecture. That is not to say the book is simply a rehash - it's an essential text for any .NET developer, whether or not you are using WCF. One of the things that is emphasized is that if you develop software that works on more than 1 PC then you should be developing service oriented systems, and if you develop service oriented systems in .NET then you should be using WCF. My only criticism of the book is that it does not provide a contextual background for existing users of previous distributed technologies (asmx web services, remoting, etc). However this is entirely understandable given that the whole point of WCF is to abstract these technologies into a common framework. The code is all in C# and it does get a little hard going at times but there isn't a single wasted line in this book. It will serve well as both a (steep) learning curve and a reference guide. An essential purchase for all .NET developers.

This book is very thorough and probably a great reference but if you want to get up and running asap then this isn't the book to choose. The bulk of the "code" consists merely of function prototypes which I can't see the point of at all. There is virtually no sample code that shows how something practical might be achieved so maybe buy this book if you're starting to get heavily into WCF - but not when you're starting off.

This book is an excellent text on WCF and I have very much enjoyed reading it. A couple of caveats, however: - WCF is vast, so be prepared to use this book as a primer and dig deeper if you want to do moderately complex things - A lot of theoretical knowledge is assumed. One thing that particularly struck me is the level of threading knowledge assumed in places, e.g. Chapter 8 - Concurrency Management. This is not a criticism of the book - WCF services have to be multi-threaded in most cases. It's just something to be aware of if you're considering buying this book.

Despite its age (2007), it's still extremely relevant for any beginner/intermediate WCF programmer. I felt it had just the right level of content, not a "Hello World" and not too advanced. Rather than waste pages on concepts that are used incredibly rarely (such as MSMQ), the author simply says "Beyond the scope of this book", which is the right move, in my opinion. It's well written, easy to follow and helped me go from beginner to intermediate in a couple of days. I particularly appreciated the last section in the book, which summarises the Dos and Don'ts by each topic (Contracts, Clients, Bindings, Security, etc.) Whenever I am designing a new SOA-based project, I shall remember to consult this best practice section. The only reason why I'm giving it 4 stars is that it's a little old, referencing to .NET 3 and VS 2005. It obviously does not have any information on the competing Web API, for example. Don't be put off by this though as it's still a fantastic book for anybody who'd like to learn or sharpen their WCF skills.

WCF has been part of my work on a daily basis for many months now. But very rarely refer to this book. It's turgid.