Great book for learning WCF -- but examples are outdated
This book was out well before the RTM of WCF and I'm amazed at how great a job the authors did being so far in the lead of the wave of WCF books. The entire book is really a set of explanatory articles walking readers through introductory topics, general knowledge, and deep dives into specific areas of WCF.
The writing style is clear and to the point, and the exercises are great for demonstrating the specific bits they're talking about. The authors managed to keep all the code examples up to date via constant update releases on a companion website.
There's also a bonus chapter covering InfoCard, its background, and how it ties in with WCF and some nice example code.
(This is also one of the very few useful books I've found from Sams. I generally dislike their offerings, but this one's a winner.)
a work still in progress, but quite intriguing
WCF is a very promising new technology being put out by Microsoft. You should take note that it is still actively a work in progress. Made clear both by the text in the book and by postings from other reviewers and the authors. There is indeed a potential drawback, inasmuch as specific coding details may get obsoleted by an eventual stable production release. But before you are tempted to turn away, keep in mind that the very title cover of the book says "Beta Edition". The advantage is an early, informal look at WCF.
There are several intriguing parts of WCF. One that caught my attention is claims-based authorisation. It generalises the well established idea of an Access Control List. All previous implementations of ACLs were specific to given platforms. There was no concept that you would need to have some kind of ACL across multiple platforms. Whereas Microsoft has used the Security Assertion Markup Language to implement claims in a textual XML format that can be conveyed between platforms. Potentially, it means that claims can be instantiated under unix or linux, for example, and be fully compatible with those under a Microsoft operating system.
It's also nice as another demonstration how XML really is the way to go for interplatform interoperability. Unlike the binary morass of CORBA.
The book is replete with C# code examples. Plus the Sams website has more code. You can quickly start tinkering.
Good Initial Perspective on WCF
Gives a good MSFT perspective on WCF and the HOWTO get up & running with WCF.
A very well written book
This a very well written step by step guide to WCF. Though the book does not reflect the changes in June CTP, it presents the concepts in a nice, easy to understand manner.
Already Out of Date
Breaking changes in the June CTP make going through the samples frustrating and there are no updates on the publisher's site.
These guys work for MS so they should have known about the breaking changes and delayed the book by 6 weeks so they could release it with updated content. If they are as deeply entrenched with the architects and developers as they say then they would know about changes long before they were implemented and released (i.e. they would know about June CTP changes in April).
Now you have to drudge through the author's blog postings to find the updates. At the very least they could consolidate the updates into one zip file and put it on the publisher's site.
Does it really make sense to release a book on May 25 only to have it out of date 4 weeks later?
(7 reviews)
