Chapter 2. Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow 4.0 Primer

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) were first introduced with the release of the .NET Framework 3.0 in November 2006. The goal of WCF was to introduce a framework that aids in building distributed applications that leverages web services, MSMQ interfaces, and remoting with a consistent, service-oriented, communication platform. This platform abstracts the communication details (including transport, encoding, encryption, and authentication) from implementation logic. Because of this abstraction, we can often modify service behavior through configuration changes without impacting existing logic or compiled code. WCF controls WS-* implementation, distributed transactions, security, and serialization in a manageable fashion, and in a way that is relatively consistent across service platforms. With Windows Workflow, the concept of designer-based workflow was brought to the mass...