Sebastopol, CA--As Juval Lowy observes, it's difficult to get a consistent answer from different people on what WCF is: "To the web service developer, it is the ultimate interoperability solution, an implementation of a long list of industry standards. To the distributed application developer, it is the easiest way of making remove calls and even queued calls. To the system developer, it is the next generation of productivity-oriented features, such as transactions and hosting, that provide off-the-shelf plumbing for applications. To the application developer, it is a declarative programming model for structuring the application. And to the architect, it is how one can finally build service-oriented applications," says Lowy, adding, "WCF is in actuality, all of those, simply because it was designed that way--to be the unified next generation of Microsoft's disparate technologies."
The importance of WCF to the .NET developer is not to be underestimated. "To me, WCF is simply the next development platform, which to a large extent subsumes raw .NET programming. WCF should be used by any .NET developer, regardless of application type, size, or industry domain," says Lowy. His new book, Programming WCF Services (O'Reilly, US $44.99) is an authoritative introduction to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), a book that goes beyond mere documentation to providing the insight developers need to understand the platform.
"WCF allows developers to focus on the business logic, not on the plumbing, and decouples them from the plumbing by providing off-the-shelf-plumbing," says Lowy, a Microsoft Software Legend who took part in the strategic design of WCF and worked with the team that implemented it. "This enables developers to be incredibly more productive, and to cross boundaries such as technology, team, industry domain, business models, etc."
Programming WCF Services focuses on the rationale behind particular design decisions, often shedding light on poorly documented and little-understood aspects of SOA development. Developers and architects will not only learn the "how" of WCF programming, but also relevant design guidelines, best practices, and pitfalls. Original techniques and utilities provided by Juval Lowy throughout the book go well beyond the guidance that can be found in conventional sources.Programming WCF Services covers:
- Service contract factoring
- Data contract versioning and marshaling
- Scalability strategies
- Operations, calls, and events
- Transactions and fault handling
- Concurrency management
- Queued services
- Service-oriented security
Juval Lowy is a software architect and the principal of IDesign, a company specializing in .NET architecture consulting and advanced .NET training. Lowy is Microsoft's Regional Director for the Silicon Valley, working with Microsoft on helping the industry adopt .NET. He participates in the Microsoft internal design reviews for future versions of .NET and related technologies. Lowy has published numerous articles, regarding almost every aspect of .NET development, and is a frequent presenter at development conferences. Microsoft recognized him as a Software Legend --one of the world's top .NET experts and industry leaders.
Background and Market Information: http://del.icio.us/oreillymedia/wcfAdditional Resources:
More information about the book, including table of contents, index, author bio, and cover graphicProgramming WCF Services
Juval Lowy
ISBN: 0-596-52799-7, 610 pages, Print: $44.99 US, $58.99 CA
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