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WCF: The Bottom Line

Hopefully this little history lesson has illustrated that WCF is the preferred approach for building

distributed applications under .NET 3.0 and higher. Whether you are attempting to build an in-

house application using TCP protocols, are moving data between programs on the same machine

using named pipes, or are exposing data to the world at large using web service protocols, WCF is

the recommended API to do so.

This is not to say you cannot use the original .NET distributed-centric namespaces

(System.Runtime.Remoting, System.Messaging, System.EnterpriseServices, System.Web.Services,

etc.) in new development efforts. In fact, in some cases (specifically if you need to build COM+

objects), you will be required to do so. In any case, if you have used these APIs in previous projects,

you will find learning WCF straightforward. Like the technologies that preceded it, WCF makes con-

siderable use of XML-based configuration files, .NET attributes, and proxy generation utilities. 

With this introductory foundation behind us, we can now turn to the topic of actually building

WCF applications. Again, do understand that full coverage of WCF would require a entire book, as

each of the supported services (MSMQ, COM+, P2P, named pipes, etc.) could easily be a chapter

unto itself. Here, you will learn the overall process of building WCF programs using both TCP- and

HTTP-based (e.g., web service) protocols. This should put you in a good position for future study as

you see fit. 

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