WSE 3.0, in many ways, is only a stepping stone to the future platform for service-oriented applications, which is Windows Communication Framework (WCF), code-named Indigo. WCF takes a similar view in that service-based communication should be easy, and is aimed at bringing us into the era of Service Oriented Programming. Service Oriented Programming (SOP) has four key tenets:
WCF is backward-compatible with existing Web Service technologies and can be implemented with a few simple attributes. In fact, it's possible to take an existing ASP.NET Web Service and expose it to both existing clients and WCF clients with only a few attributes and configuration. At the time of writing, WCF is available as a Technology Preview, but it does have a GO Live license, so you can use it in your code right now. You can find more information, and links to the download, at http://www.windowcommunication.net/. |