Programming WCF Services

Author: Juval Lowy
Publisher: O'Reilly
ISBN-10: 0596526997
ISBN-13: 978-0596526993
Retail Price: $44.99 US, $58.99 CDN
Publication Date: February 2007
Softcover: 610 pages
Online information: Table of contents, sample chapter, index
URL: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596526993/index.html

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft unified platform for developing service-oriented (SO) applications and it is part of the .NET Framework 3.0. What does this mean? Well, Microsoft was offering various ways to create SO applications in the .NET Framework (Web services, Remoting and MSMQ) each with their own programming model. The problem was that you had to decide early which technology you would use and because the programming models were very different, you had to stick with your decision (or scratch that code and start over). WCF is the unification of the SOA technologies and it will simplify the job of the architects and developers but it also means that they have to learn a new programming model.

“Programming WCF Services” is a book targeting developers who have already used or looked at WCF and want to get a deeper understanding of the technology. Well known author and speaker Juval Lowy knowledge of WCF is undisputable: he was on the WCF strategic design review board and it shows. The amount of information crammed in this book is staggering but be warned, this is not a beginner’s book nor is this a step by step book. Each aspect of WCF is covered in details from the data contracts to the transactions. Lowy even includes WCF coding standards in one of the appendixes.

If you want to learn WCF from scratch, I would recommend “Learning WCF” by Michele Leroux Bustamante but if you want the ultimate WCF book, look no further and grab of copy of Lowy’s book. High praises for “Programming WCF Services”.