Customer Reviews

Essential Windows Communication Foundation (WCF): For .NET Framework 3.5

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I'm a big fan of the entire "Essential" series from Addison-Wesley and I expected a lot from this book. I could sum up my opinion on it by saying "It delivers".

My vantage point is a little different from most in that I was coauthor of a book on Winfx/Indigo and I teach WCF. The pool of books out there on WCF are all quite good when compared to other technologies. I think that's b/c in large part, enterprise technologies aren't usually used by beginners and there's been a general reluctance to embrace WCF from what I've seen. I suspect this is in large part b/c you have to relearn Remoting/WS/WSE/MSMQ/Enterprise Services. Once you dive into it though, you quickly realize that WCF is almost too good to be true.

This book does a few things very well. First off, it explains each of the concepts clearly. I find that the authors all write well and are very good at succinctly communicating whatever they are talking about without ever talking over your head. The level of detail is very good too. A few places they could have went deeper (for instance, I think MTOM should have gotten more than a brief descriptive few sentences) but on the whole, I think the covered topics in proportion with how much they are used in the marketplace. They use a good bit of both simple and more involved expamples so if this was your first WCF book, you'd be well served but if you've read several WCF books, you'd still be glad you bought the book. I've bought both the print version and the Kindle version (which I love) and don't believe I've come across any errors. As such, I'd have to say the editing is very good, although that's not surprising in the least from this series. Another nice feature of the book is that while it has three authors, the writing style if very similar. So you get the benefit of three different people's experience without having the problems related to three different writing styles.

I found this book to be very helpful overall and even though I was well versed in most of the stuff they cover, I still found it a great reference. I've purchased copies of it for everyone on my staff and that's perhaps the highest compliment I could pay it - in addition to buying both the hard cover and Kindle version. I suspect if you buy it, you'll be glad you did.

If you're looking for a fairly exhaustive book that covers WCF in huge detail then this is your book. But if you're looking to get yourself up to speed quickly or you like practical examples at every turn to give context to your learning, look for another book.

I'm not sorry I bought it but it's just chapter after chapter of dry reading without the benefit of very many examples of how to actually use the details taught. Knowing this, I would have read another book first so I could keep from getting bored, then I would use this book to fill in the details.

A remarkably well organized and easy to read WCF how-to with respect to VS2008. Starts out with a basic service comparing code and configuration implementations. Subsequent chapters evolve gracefully reducing complexity to incremental understanding. Resulting SOAP and WSDL is presented with careful attention to cause and effect. WCF Services are compared with ASMX Web Services providing basic knowledge for newbies and practical information needed to move forward with WCF. Real world issues, like versioning, are regularly presented with mitigating strategies. In a technology library of hundreds, this is one of the best in terms of content and construction.

Wow, I'm still surprised by this book - especially by the way it's written, so that WCF subject, which is quite new to me - gets revealed part by part. I usually read books lying on my bed ;), so it's a straight way of falling asleep (and when it happens just depends on the book) - and I must admit that with this one it takes a much longer time :). And I read it after work even! ;)

I already own a couple of books on WCF - but none of them seemed to cover important (and advanced) topics such as serializers and bindings in-depth. But this book does, and it does it in a way that is both thorough and smart.

Sometimes it can be hard to make the right choice of components, but luckily, this book comes with a lot of useful and great comparison matrix' on different subject, which makes decisioning really easy.

All in all, this is one of the best book on WCF, but for me, this stands out to be the best. Highly recommended.

If you are going to get into Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) with .NET Framework 3.5, you will want this book by your side.

The authors do a great job of covering all the basics and then go in depth on each major WCF topic offering a chapter on each. They cover all the new .NET 3.5 topics thoroughly and in depth.

The have an entire chapter on Workflow Services, which is new to .NET 3.5. They do a great job of explaining it from a WF viewpoint and a WCF viewpoint.

They also have go into depth on using WCF for web (AJAX Integration, JSON, WebOperationContext, WebScriptServiceHost, WebScriptServiceHostFactory, RSS, ATOM) programming.

One of the things I really like about this book is they way the authors summarized topics with tables. They make comparing options, which there are a lot with WCF, easier to pick.

I know the big thing with WCF is that it brings a lot of different technologies together under one umbrella, but you still have to make choices on what to use and then how to use it. The umbrella does not make the choices any less confusing unless you have a good guide for making those choices. This book accomplishes that completely.

An example can be found by going to the Amazon page that allows you to search the book, and searching on "Supported Features of Each Binding". Click page on page 117 and then check out the next page also.

This book is very well organized, it is in depth, and the writing styles make it an easy read.

There is no code to download yet, but I contact one of the authors and they said it is on the way.

I highly recommend spending some time with this book before jumping head first into WCF. Using this book as a guide to help you make decisions about which path to take will make using WCF a pleasure.

First of all, we need to note that WCF is not an easy subject to understand. There is lot of ground to cover and the subject matter is very deep. I tried to read the Jowal Lowy book on WCF. I was very lost and I did not understand what he was talking about. This was after I attended his 5 day class. I was not getting any idea of the subject.

So, I decided that I need to get a book that is simple to understand and get a good grasp of the subject. And this was the book I was looking for. Authors use only one service IStockService through out and I really appreciated that. I could tweak this one service as I ventured into advanced topics. All of the topics are covered and most of them in depth.

Now, I am reading the Jowal book now and it is making all sense. This book helped me to lay a superb foundation of the subject.

If you really want to learn WCF, this is the book. Thats why I have this 5 stars because it met my requirement.

I got so much valuable information out of this book. It answered just about all of my questions about WCF. The writing is easy to read. The book is well organized. Topics are explained clearly, in plain english without all the buzzwords that slow down reading. General concepts are explained, and then the author gets down to more detailed information. I wish there had been a bit more information on hosting services, but there was enough information on hosting for me to get my service hosted on IIS without any real difficulty. If you're only going to buy one WCF book, buy this one.

This book's very well written and does a great job of explaining a lot of the features around WCF. I like their approach to topics, starting out with basics and evolving from there. For example, right off the bat they do a solid job of showing a service hosted entirely in code, then do a comparable service hosted in IIS. All differences are clearly laid out with some good rationale for either implementation.

This same approach continues through the book, which is something I'm always appreciative about: give me options with clear explanations of why they'd apply, then let me choose which one fits for my environment. The authors even lay out a number of tables throughout the book showing options and alternatives - like the supported features of bindings table in chapter 4.

It's a solid book for newcomers to WCF or experienced folks looking to brush up on the deltas as WCF moves to .NET 3.5.

The book covers all aspects of WCF in a clear and concise way. Even for people with a lot of experience or architectects who want to get an overview of WCF this is a real valuable resource.

It has a nice writing style so you can even enjoy it a bit later or with a glass of wine...