Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

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

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

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.com Sales Rank: #666,548 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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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)

"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 of 6 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)

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!

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a work still in progress, but quite intriguing, July 26, 2006

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

WCF is a very promising new technology being put out by Microsoft. You should take note that it is still actively a work in progress. Made clear both by the text in the book and by postings from other reviewers and the authors. There is indeed a potential drawback, inasmuch as specific coding details may get obsoleted by an eventual stable production release. But before you are tempted to turn away, keep in mind that the very title cover of the book says "Beta Edition". The advantage is an early, informal look at WCF.

There are several intriguing parts of WCF. One that caught my attention is claims-based authorisation. It generalises the well established idea of an Access Control List. All previous implementations of ACLs were specific to given platforms. There was no concept that you would need to have some kind of ACL across multiple platforms. Whereas Microsoft has used the Security Assertion Markup Language to implement claims in a textual XML format that can be conveyed between platforms. Potentially, it means that claims can be instantiated under unix or linux, for example, and be fully compatible with those under a Microsoft operating system.

It's also nice as another demonstration how XML really is the way to go for interplatform interoperability. Unlike the binary morass of CORBA.

The book is replete with C# code examples. Plus the Sams website has more code. You can quickly start tinkering.