Essential Windows Communication Foundation: For .NET Framework 3.5

by Richard Crane, Chris Bowen, Steve Resnick

"Whether this is the first time or the fifty-first time you''re using WCF, you''ll learn something new by reading this book." --Nicholas Allen, Program Manager, Web Services, Microsoft Windows... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321440064
• ISBN13: 9780321440068
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 566 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

WCF from top to bottom

Wow, I'm still surprised by this book - especially by the way it's written, so that WCF subject, which is quite new to me - gets revealed part by part. I usually read books lying on my bed ;), so it's a straight way of falling asleep (and when it happens just depends on the book) - and I must admit that with this one it takes a much longer time :). And I read it after work even! ;)

Simply the best

I already own a couple of books on WCF - but none of them seemed to cover important (and advanced) topics such as serializers and bindings in-depth. But this book does, and it does it in a way that is both thorough and smart. Sometimes it can be hard to make the right choice of components, but luckily, this book comes with a lot of useful and great comparison matrix' on different subject, which makes decisioning really easy. All in all, this is one of the best book on WCF, but for me, this stands out to be the best. Highly recommended.

I expected a lot and it delivered

I'm a big fan of the entire "Essential" series from Addison-Wesley and I expected a lot from this book. I could sum up my opinion on it by saying "It delivers". My vantage point is a little different from most in that I was coauthor of a book on Winfx/Indigo and I teach WCF. The pool of books out there on WCF are all quite good when compared to other technologies. I think that's b/c in large part, enterprise technologies aren't usually used by beginners and there's been a general reluctance to embrace WCF from what I've seen. I suspect this is in large part b/c you have to relearn Remoting/WS/WSE/MSMQ/Enterprise Services. Once you dive into it though, you quickly realize that WCF is almost too good to be true. This book does a few things very well. First off, it explains each of the concepts clearly. I find that the authors all write well and are very good at succinctly communicating whatever they are talking about without ever talking over your head. The level of detail is very good too. A few places they could have went deeper (for instance, I think MTOM should have gotten more than a brief descriptive few sentences) but on the whole, I think the covered topics in proportion with how much they are used in the marketplace. They use a good bit of both simple and more involved expamples so if this was your first WCF book, you'd be well served but if you've read several WCF books, you'd still be glad you bought the book. I've bought both the print version and the Kindle version (which I love) and don't believe I've come across any errors. As such, I'd have to say the editing is very good, although that's not surprising in the least from this series. Another nice feature of the book is that while it has three authors, the writing style if very similar. So you get the benefit of three different people's experience without having the problems related to three different writing styles. I found this book to be very helpful overall and even though I was well versed in most of the stuff they cover, I still found it a great reference. I've purchased copies of it for everyone on my staff and that's perhaps the highest compliment I could pay it - in addition to buying both the hard cover and Kindle version. I suspect if you buy it, you'll be glad you did.

WCF how to with VS2008

A remarkably well organized and easy to read WCF how-to with respect to VS2008. Starts out with a basic service comparing code and configuration implementations. Subsequent chapters evolve gracefully reducing complexity to incremental understanding. Resulting SOAP and WSDL is presented with careful attention to cause and effect. WCF Services are compared with ASMX Web Services providing basic knowledge for newbies and practical information needed to move forward with WCF. Real world issues, like versioning, are regularly presented with mitigating strategies. In a technology library of hundreds, this is one of the best in terms of content and construction.