Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on [Paperback]

Craig McMurtry (Author), Marc Mercuri (Author), Nigel Watling (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2006

Microsoft developers, get ready for Windows Vista programming! Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on addresses an unmet need in the marketplace as there are no books, or much documentation at all, of the post-Beta 1 WCF programming model. This book contains the information you will need to work with this technology upon its release.

 

You will gain a comprehensive understanding of how to apply the Windows Communication Foundation to almost any distributed computing problem, from enterprise scale to peer-to-peer. Most importantly, after reading the book and working through the examples, you will actually have considerable experience using WCF, because the book takes you through the steps of actually building Windows Communication Foundation solutions.

 

Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on is the only book to cover capabilities comprehensively, including the facilities for building Representational State Transfer and Plain XML software services, and the extensive management interfaces.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Craig McMurtry and Marc Mercuri are members of Microsoft’s Evangelism team tasked with telling the world about the technology. As such, the authors have exclusive access to the very designers and developers that are producing the technology, as well as to early releases thereof. That access provides insights into features and application of the technology that others do not have, as well as knowledge of how the technology will evolve, and familiarity with best practices that are only just being formulated by the testing teams.

Product Details

• Paperback: 560 pages
• Publisher: Sams; 1 edition (May 25, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672328771
• ISBN-13: 978-0672328770
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,650,933 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Learn WCF Hands-On!, June 7, 2006

By 

Peter Grew (Linköping, Sweden) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on (Paperback)

"Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on!" is a great book covering the framework and model of WCF.
Each chapter starts with the basic concepts required to grasp the topic and then dives into a code example as a walkthrough.
The topics are covered clearly and in depth. It completely changed my perception of what WCF really are.
The book is well written with illustrative code examples and I recommend it to anyone wanting to learn WCF.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book for learning WCF -- but examples are outdated, April 14, 2007

By 

James Holmes "Co-Author 'Windows Developer Po... (South Central Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on (Paperback)

This book was out well before the RTM of WCF and I'm amazed at how great a job the authors did being so far in the lead of the wave of WCF books. The entire book is really a set of explanatory articles walking readers through introductory topics, general knowledge, and deep dives into specific areas of WCF.

The writing style is clear and to the point, and the exercises are great for demonstrating the specific bits they're talking about. The authors managed to keep all the code examples up to date via constant update releases on a companion website.

There's also a bonus chapter covering InfoCard, its background, and how it ties in with WCF and some nice example code.

(This is also one of the very few useful books I've found from Sams. I generally dislike their offerings, but this one's a winner.)

4 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book to learn WCF from scratch, June 5, 2006

By 

Jean Francois Berube (Montreal, Qc, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on (Paperback)

I've work with 3 different books on WCF and this one is by far the best one. First of all, it's me most up-to-date in term of CTP. But it's best asset is that it simplify the complexity of the technology and give the reader a complete reference on the framework. I've been coding on WCF for about 4 weeks and it's still my main reference since everyting is in it.

Save yourself the trouble and go with this one first!