Preface

WCF is the new Microsoft model for building services and LINQ to Entities is the new Microsoft ORM for accessing underlying data storages. Want to learn both? You may have already seen the huge reference tomes currently available.

This book is the quickest and easiest way to learn WCF and LINQ to Entities in Visual Studio 2010. WCF and LINQ to Entities are both powerful, yet complex technologies from Microsoft but this book will teach you both. The mastery of these two topics will quickly get you started in creating service-oriented applications and allow you to take your first steps into the world of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) without getting overwhelmed.

Throughout this book you will understand what's going on behind the scenes with WCF and learn the basic yet most useful techniques about LINQ to Entities. You will develop three real world, multi-tiered WCF services from beginning to end, with LINQ to Entities being used in the data access layer of the services. Various clients including Windows console applications, the WCF Test Client, Windows Form applications, and WPF applications will be created to test these WCF services. At the end of this book you will be 100 per cent confident that you understand WCF and LINQ to Entities, not only in theory, but also with sound real world experiences.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Introducing Web Services and Windows Communication Foundation, covers the basic concepts of web services and WCF is also explained.

Chapter 2, Implementing a Basic HelloWorld WCF Service, discusses how a simple HelloWorld WCF service is implemented, hosted, and consumed.

Chapter 3, Hosting and Debugging the HelloWorld WCF Service, discusses various hosting and debugging techniques for WCF services.

Chapter 4, Implementing a WCF Service in the Real World, explains how to create a layered WCF service with an interface layer and a business logic layer.

Chapter 5, Adding Database Support and Exception Handling to the RealNorthwind WCF Service, explains how to add a data access layer and fault message handling to the previously created WCF service.

Chapter 6, LINQ—Language-Integrated Query, discusses LINQ-related language features such as anonymous types, extension methods, and lambda expressions.

Chapter 7, LINQ to Entities: Basic Concepts and Features, covers the basic concepts and features of LINQ to Entities such as LINQ to Entities designer, querying and updating a table, deferred execution, and lazy/eager loading.

Chapter 8, LINQ to Entities: Advanced Concepts and Features, discusses advanced concepts and features of LINQ to Entities such as stored procedures, inheritance, concurrency control, and transactional support.

Chapter 9, Applying LINQ to Entities to a WCF Service, covers how the data access layer of the WCF service will be recreated with LINQ to Entities.

Chapter 10, Distributed Transaction Support of WCF, explains how to add distributed transaction support to the WCF service.

What you need for this book

1. Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0

2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2010: Ultimate, Premium, or Professional

3. Microsoft SQL Server 2008, 2005, or Express

4. Internet Information Server 7.0 or 6.0

5. Windows 7 or XP

Who this book is for

This book is for C# and C++ developers who are eager to get started with WCF and LINQ to Entities 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.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code is set as follows:

public bool UpdateProduct(Product product)
{
// TODO: call business logic layer to update product
if (product.UnitPrice <= 0)
return false;
else
return true;
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
<connectionStrings>
<add name ="NorthwindConnectionString" connectionString="server=your_db_server\ your_db_instance; 
uid=your_user_name; pwd=your_password; 
database=Northwind" />
</connectionStrings>
<system.web>
<compilation debug="true" />
</system.web>

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

C:\SOAWithWCFandLINQ\Projects\HelloWorld\HelloWorldClient>
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0\Bin\SvcUtil.exe" http://localhost:8080/HostDevServer/HelloWorldService.svc?wsdl /out:HelloWorldServiceRef.cs /config:app.config

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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Tip

Downloading the example code for the book

Visit http://www.packtpub.com/files/code/1148_Code.zip to directly download the example code.

The downloadable files contain instructions on how to use them.

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