Summary

In this chapter, you learned how to use Windows Communication Foundation for communication between a client and a server. WCF is platform-independent like ASP.NET Web services, but offers features similar to .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, and Message Queuing.

WCF has a heavy focus on contracts to make it easier to isolate developing clients and services, and to support platform independence: service contracts, data contracts, and message contracts. You can use several attributes to define the behavior of the service and its operations.

You’ve seen how to create clients from the metadata offered by the service, but also by using the .NET interface contract.

You’ve learned the features of different binding options. WCF offers not only bindings for platform independence but also bindings for fast communication between .NET applications.