Want to learn WCF?

[Administrator]

In our recent upgrade to VS 2008 we learned that WSE/WS-* is dead in VS 2008. Of course we're not surprised Microsoft would do this to force people to WCF, but after huffing and puffing and the shock of having to learn one of the "cosmic 3" (WPF, WCF, WF) I am happy to say the WCF experience has been awesome!

WCF is amazingly easy to learn, especially for those that know web services. I wish I would have gone down this path with .NET 3.0 instead of ever using WSE 3 and WS-* implementations. So here are a few ways YOU can learn WCF in no time.

It all starts with Michele Leroux Bustamante aka "That Indigo Girl" as "Indigo" was the code name for WCF before it was "named." Michele wrote a great book "Learning WCF" which is one of my "must have" recommendations. She also hosted a series of 15 web casts you can download for your viewing pleasure. Here is the list from Michele's web site.

WCF is definitely the way to go in my opinion, now having been forced to use it. The MSDN docs are easy to read (for the most part) on WCF so don't forget to overlook the information that lies before you.

 

[petersgyoung]

Agree. Michele's book is a good book. Just to remind other readers that this book is written in C# (because it is a VB.Net forum). Michele asked me to translate the code to VB for her (see http://www.thatindigogirl.com/LearningWCFCode.aspx). You can download the code for reference. However, the translated code was good only in VB2005 + WCF add-in environment (you cannot download that add-in now). So, you need to make some modification to those codes if you want to learn WCF in VB2008.