Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step (Step By Step Developer Series) [Paperback]

John Sharp (Author)

Book Description

Series: Step By Step Developer Series | Publication Date: January 31, 2007

Teach yourself the essentials of Windows Communication Foundation—one step at a time. With this practical tutorial, you get hands-on guidance for creating the Web services you need to implement robust business applications for Windows.

Discover how to:

• Build and host a Web service
• Design service contracts and data contracts
• Maintain state information and support transactions
• Programmatically configure bindings and endpoints
• Use load-balancing and perform content-based message routing
• Implement message encryption, authentication, authorization
• Optimize performance with service throttling, encoding, and streaming
• Implement asynchronous operations, oneway methods, and events
• Create services that interoperate with ASP.NET and COM+

CD features:

• Files for practice exercises
• Code samples
• Fully searchable eBook

A Note Regarding the CD or DVD

The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to [e-mail].

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Key Book Benefits:

-Provides sequential, step by step guidance for creating WCF-enabled services
-Delivers context for understanding how services interoperate and how to relate service-orientation to the more-familiar object-orientation
-Perfect for new-to-topic developers
-Includes a CD with exercises and code samples for each chapter

About the Author

John Sharp is the author of Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step and Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Step by Step. John is a principal technologist for Content Master Ltd., where he works on technology and training projects for a variety of international customers.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press (January 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0735623368
• ISBN-13: 978-0735623361
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #487,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Sharp is a principal technologist for Content Master Ltd., where he works on technology and training projects for a variety of international customers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not good for Vista and VS 2008 users, February 8, 2008

By 

Gary D. Blakely "Gary Blakely" (Anaheim, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step (Step By Step Developer Series) (Paperback)

This book is both good and bad. The good is that the author is skilled at explaining complex material in simple straightforward manner and this is a rare skill for computer book authors. Also, the labs are more interesting than the standard "hello world" type of labs. However, like most of the WCF books out now, it is written for Visual Studio 2005 and for XP and not for Vista and Visual Studio 2008. The lab solutions don't even work. The worst is that the author and the publisher have no VS 2008 lab downloads or update notes. Some of the other authors have went to the trouble of doing that.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book from start to finish, February 18, 2007

By 

William G. Ryan "Uber Book Nerd" (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step (Step By Step Developer Series) (Paperback)

I've read quite a few books in the Step by Step series and am often a little frustrated with them. By their very nature, they walk you through specific scenarios and explain them to you. They typically do this quite well. And while I typically get a lot out of this, I often am left wanting for more. This isn't a knock on the series, it's just an inherent limitation. After all, no author can foresee every scenario a reader might have.

This book was a little different though.

The first three chapters were pretty typical in that they were the basic use cases you'd expect. THen you hit Chapter 4 "Protecting an Enterprise Service" and things get interesting fast. From start to finish, just about every single security question I had was answered here. Chapter 5 builds on it and expands the scenarios to the internet and by the time you get through those two chapters, you'll 'get' security and WCF.

The book then goes onto Service Contracts, State management, Transactions and Reliable sessions. I was a little underwhelmed with the discussion on Reliable Sessions but it was decent.

Chapter 10 goes on to using configuration to manage services and man, this really helped me to make progress. It's so easy to screw up simple things in configuration and end up hitting a wall, but this got me through it.

Chapter 11 goes on to discuss OneWay/Asyn operations (which is one of the more straightforward aspects of WCF). Nothing dramatic here but again, a pretty good discussion.

Chatper 12 goes onto Performance. Superb! Too often when I was learning the WCF, I was satisfied to get things working and didn't worry nearly enough about performance. Eventually though, you're going to have to deal with Performance and this chapter gets you there.

Another great touch was Chatper 15 - Managing Identity with Windows Cardspace. I'm not personally using Cardspace but this chapter was just plain cool and a great touch.

All in all, this is the best book in the Step by Step series I've ever read. There's some stiff competition to be the 'best' of the WCF books out there, but this book is definitely going to be a contender.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Called "Step by step" for a reason, May 24, 2009

By 

V. Holen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Step by Step (Step By Step Developer Series) (Paperback)

This book delivers just what it promises, a learn-by-doing, practical, hands-on approach to WCF. Uncompromisingly so, in fact.

A typical section consists of two or three paragraphs of introduction and theory, followed by five pages of step-by-step instructions for creating an example. The instructions are very detailed, on the level of "In the Enterprise Configuration console, in the File menu, click New Application" or "Press Enter to close the ProductsClient console". Sometimes more theory and explanations are strewn between the steps.

I found this to be a messy and occationally tedious way of presenting information.

You have to read through every button press of every guide, no matter how uninteresting the topic is, in case a precious bit of "why" or "when" has been placed there instead of in the theory section. Some elements, like the definition o a behaviour, seems to be missing entirely and is meant to be inferred from what happens when you change it.

Even for the interesting parts, the level of detail can make it tedious to follow. Fortunately, the resulting configuration XML is often listed after a handful of detailed button pushing steps. I often found the XML to be easier to follow (XML for "Set the security mode to Message and the algorithmSuite to Basic128" was easier to understand and perform than 11 steps in which "Expand the ProductsServiceHost project in Solution Explorer, right-click the App.config file and then click Edit WCF Configuration" was one of the shortest).

The information, however unstructured at times, is fairly complete and correct (as far as I can tell). Some books pretend to explain "SetFooSnafucationLevel" by saying "Sets the Foo Snafucation Level" (a blatant cop out), but this book does nothing of the sort. The author clearly knows what he's doing.

The book definitely has its market, but unless you're the pathologically practical type who likes very, very details instructions, you might not be it. The information is still there though, if you're willing to hunt for it.