Chapter 30: Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

Overview

Until now, building components that were required to communicate a message from one point to another was not always the simplest of tasks. This was because there was more than one technology in Microsoft’s belt that you could have used for such an action.

For instance, you could have used ASP.NET Web Services, Web Service Enhancements 3.0 (WSE), MSMQ, Enterprise Services, .NET Remoting, and even the System.Messaging namespace. Each one of these technologies has pros and cons associated with it. ASP.NET Web Services (also known as ASMX Web Services) provided the capability to easily build interoperable Web Services. The WSE enabled you to easily build services that took advantage of some of the WS-* message protocols. MSMQ enabled the queuing of messages, making it easy to work with solutions that were only intermittently connected. Enterprise Services, provided as a successor to COM+, offered an easy means to build distributed applications. .NET Remoting was a fast way to move messages from one .NET application to another. And this is only the Microsoft world - it doesn’t include all the options available in other environments, such as the Java world.

With these options for a Microsoft developer alone, it can be tough to decide what path to take with the applications you’re trying to build. With this problem in mind, Microsoft has brought forth the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).

WCF is a new framework for building service-oriented applications. Microsoft wanted to provide its developers with a framework that would provide the fastest means to getting a proper service-oriented architecture up and running. Using the WCF, you will be able to take advantage of all of the items that made the aforementioned distribution technologies powerful. WCF is the answer and the successor to all these other message distribution technologies.

WCF is a new component of the .NET Framework 3.0. Therefore, to work through the examples of this chapter, you need the .NET Framework 3.0 installed on your machine.