Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 Unleashed

by McMurty, Craig; Watling, Nigel; Winkler, Matt; Mercuri, Marc

• ISBN13: 9780672330247
• ISBN10: 0672330245
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2008-10-07
• Publisher: Sams Publishing

Summary

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoftrs"s dynamic technology for allowing autonomous software to communicate. Superseding earlier technologies such as COM/DCOM, .NET Remoting, ASP.NET Web Services, and the Web Services Enhancements for .NET, WCF provides a single solution that is designed to always be the best way to exchange data among software entities. It also provides the infrastructure for developing the next generation of Web Services, with support for the WS-* family of specifications, and a new serialization system for enhanced performance. In the 3.5 release, WCF has been expanded to include support for REST, JSON, and Syndication (RSS and Atom) services, further broadening the possibilities for what can be done. For information technology professionals, WCF supplies an impressive array of administration tools that enterprises and software vendors can use to reduce the cost of ownership of their solutions without writing a single line of code. Most important, WCF delivers on the promise of model-driven software development with the new software factory approach, by which one can iteratively design solutions in a modeling language and generate executables from lower-level class libraries. Windows Communication Foundation 3.5 Unleashedis designed to be the essential resource for software developers and architects working with WCF. The book guides readers through a conceptual understanding of all the facilities of WCF and provides step-by-step guides to applying the technology to practical problems. As evangelists at Microsoft for WCF, WF, and CardSpace, Craig McMurtry, Marc Mercuri, Nigel Watling, and Matt Winkler are uniquely positioned to write this book. They had access to the development team and to the product as it was being built. Their work with enterprises and outside software vendors has given them unique insight into how others see the software, how they want to apply it, and the challenges they face in doing so. --Gives you nearly 100 best practices for programming with WCF --Provides detailed coverage of how to version services that you will not find anywhere else --Delves into using WCF together with Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows CardSpace --Provides detailed coverage of the new high-performance data contract serializer for .NET --Walks you through creating secure, reliable, transacted messaging, and how to understand the available options --Introduces you to federated, claims-based security and shows you how to incorporate SAML and WS-Trust security token services into your architecture --Provides step-by-step instructions for how to customize every aspect of WCF --Shows you how to add behaviors, communication channels, message encoders, and transports --Presents options for implementing publish/subscribe solutions --Gives clear guidance on peer-to-peer communications with WCF

Author Biography

Matt Winkler is a senior Program Manager in Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division, where he focuses on building the visual designer for WF.  Previously he was the Technical Evangelist for WF, focusing on driving adoption among software developers around the world.  Based in Redmond, Matt spends his non-work time reading more tech books and chasing around his two children.

Table of Contents

Introducing the Windows Communication Foundation
Prerequisites	p. 9
Partial Types	p. 9
Generics	p. 10
Nullable Value Types	p. 13
The Lightweight Transaction Manager	p. 14
Role Providers	p. 16
Summary	p. 18
References	p. 19
The Fundamentals	p. 21
Background	p. 21
Enter Services	p. 24
Windows Communication Foundation	p. 26
The Service Model	p. 28
A Software Resource	p. 34
Building a Service for Accessing the Resource	p. 36
Using the Service	p. 55
Hosting the Service in IIS	p. 67
Changing How the Service Communicates	p. 72
Visual Studio 2008 Tool Support	p. 75
Summary	p. 82
References	p. 83
Data Representation and Durable Services	p. 85
Background	p. 85
The XmlSerializer and the DataContractSerializer	p. 87
The XML Fetish	p. 91
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Introduction IntroductionThe Windows Communication Foundation, which was code-named Indigo, is a technology that allows pieces of software to communicate with one another. There are many other such technologies, including the Component Object Model (COM) and Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), Remote Method Invocation (RMI), Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ), and WebSphere MQ. Each of those works well in a particular scenario, not so well in others, and is of no use at all in some cases. The Windows Communication Foundation is meant to work well in any circumstance in which a Microsoft .NET assembly must exchange data with any other software entity. In fact, the Windows Communication Foundation is meant to always be the very best option. Its performance is at least on par with that of any other alternative and is usually better; it offers at least as many features and probably several more. It is certainly always the easiest solution to program.Concretely, the Windows Communication Foundation consists of a small number of .NET libraries with several new sets of classes that it adds to the Microsoft .NET Framework class library, for use with version 2.0 and later of the .NET Common Language Runtime. It also adds some facilities for hosting Windows Communication Foundation solutions to the 5.1 and later versions of Internet Information Services (IIS), the web server built into Windows operating systems.The Windows Communication Foundation is distributed free of charge as part of a set that includes several other technologies, including the Windows Presentation Foundation, which was code-named Avalon, Windows CardSpace, which was code-named InfoCard, and the Windows Workflow Foundation. Prior to its release, that group of technologies was called WinFX, but it was renamed the .NET Framework 3.0 in June 2006. Despite that name, the .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 is still primarily just a collection of classes added to the .NET Framework 2.0 for use with the 2.0 version of the .NET Common Language Runtime, along with some enhancements to the Windows operating system, as shown in Figure I.1.Figure I.1 The .NET Framework 3.0.You can install the .NET Framework 3.0 and 3.5 on Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003 R2. The runtime components are preinstalled on Windows Vista. On Windows Server 2008 you can add the .NET Framework 3.0 via the Application Server Foundation role service. Only a very small number of features of the .NET Framework 3.0 are available exclusively on Windows Vista and later operating systems.The .NET Framework 3.5 builds incrementally on top of .NET Framework 3.0. Features relevant to this book include web protocol support for building Windows Communication Foundation services, including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS and ATOM, workflow-enabled services and full tooling support in Visual Studio 2008. During development, .the NET Framework 3.5 was factored into "red" bits and "green" bits. The red bits w