WCF is Microsoft's unified programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments. WCF is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework and simplifies development of connected systems. It unifies a broad array of distributed systems capabilities in a composable, extensible architecture that supports multiple transports, messaging patterns, encodings, network topologies, and hosting models. It is the next version of several existing products: ASP.NET's web methods (ASMX), Microsoft Web Services Enhancements for Microsoft .NET (WSE), .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, and System.Messaging.

If you are a C++/C# developer looking for a book to build real-world WCF services, you would have run into the huge reference tomes currently in the market. These books are crammed with more information than you need and most build simple one-tier WCF services. And if you plan to use LINQ in the data access layer, you might buy another volume that is just as huge and just as expensive.

Our book is the quickest and easiest way to learn WCF and LINQ in Visual Studio 2008. It is the first book to combine WCF and LINQ in a multi-tier real-world WCF service. Multi-tier services provide separation of concerns and better factoring of code, which gives you better maintainability and the ability to split layers out into separate tiers for scalability. WCF and LINQ are both powerful yet complex technologies from Microsoft, but this book will get you through. The mastery of these two topics will quickly get you started creating service-oriented applications, and allow you to take your first steps into the world of Service Oriented Architecture without getting overwhelmed.

Through this book, you will first understand WCF concepts by developing a functional service and apply these techniques to a multi-tier real-world WCF service. You will learn how to use WCF to define the contracts in the service interface layer, Plain Old C# Objects (POCO) to implement business rules in the business logic layer, and LINQ to communicate with the databases in the data access layer. Microsoft pattern and practice Web Service Software Factory is used to create the framework for this WCF service. Concurrency control and distributed transaction support are discussed and tested at the end of the book. Clear step-by-step instructions and precise screenshots will make sure you will not get lost in the new world of WCF and LINQ.

What you will learn from this book?

• Create, host, and consume your first WCF service in just a few minutes
• Explore and learn different hosting and debugging options for a WCF service
• Build a multi-tier real-world WCF service from scratch to understand every layer of a WCF service and apply it to your real work
• Add exception handling to your WCF services
• Accelerate your WCF service development with Service Factory by applying best practices
• Understand basic and advanced concepts and features of LINQ and LINQ to SQL
• Communicate securely and reliably with databases by rewriting the data access layer of your WCF service with LINQ to SQL
• Control concurrent updates to the databases and add distributed transaction support to your WCF services

Approach

This book is a step-by-step tutorial with clear instructions and screenshots to guide you through the creation of a multi-tier real-world WCF service solution. Configuration files, host applications, test clients, and WCF services for each solution will be available for download on this website for you to examine, modify, and debug from the outside to the inside.

The book focuses on the essentials of using WCF and LINQ, rather than providing a reference to every single possibility. It leaves the reference material online where it belongs, and concentrates instead on practical examples, code, and advice.

Who this book is written for?

This book is for C# and C++ developers who are eager to get started with WCF and LINQ, and want a book that is practical and rich with examples from the very beginning. Developers and architects evaluating SOA implementation technologies for their company will find this book particularly useful because it gets you started with Microsoft's tools for SOA and shows you how to customize our examples for your prototypes.

This book presumes basic knowledge of C# or C++. Previous experience with Visual Studio will be helpful but is not required, as detailed instructions are given throughout the book.