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Introducing Windows Communication

Foundation

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ET 3.0 introduced an API specifically for the process of building distributed systems named

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Unlike other distributed APIs you may have used in

the past (DCOM, .NET remoting, XML web services, etc.), WCF provides a single, unified, and

extendable programming object model that can be used to interact with a number of previously

diverse distributed technologies.

This chapter begins by framing the need for WCF and examining the problems it intends to

solve by way of a quick review of previous distributed computing APIs. After we look at the services

provided by WCF, we’ll turn to examine the .NET assemblies (and core types) that represent this

programming model. Over the remainder of this chapter, we’ll build several WCF services, hosts,

and clients using various WCF development tools.