I've been hearing about WCF for a couple of years now, and I still don't get it. I understand that it's supposed to be a replacement for web services, remoting, MSMQ, and a few other things.
The trouble is, every tutorial I find assumes that I've done one of those things, and it tends to follow the line of "Here are the differences; you know the rest." But I don't know the rest!
So: Do you know of any tutorial articles, books, etc. that assume that the reader knows C# or VB .NET, but nothing about web services, MSMQ, remoting, and all those other technologies that WCF replaces?
Here are some resources from MSDN that I do not think that require any prior knowledge:
" Learning WCF [1]" by Michele Leroux Bustamante is an excellent book as well. It contains a ton of step-by-step tutorials for just about every scenario that one can think of with WCF.
From what I've seen WCF has a pretty steep learning curve up until you just "get it" - there'll be a moment of epiphany where you just go, "OH YEAH!!" It's not as complicated as it looks at first blush.
Seriously though, take a look at this book. The version that I have focuses on VS 2005 implementation which is a bit different from what you'll find in VS 2008. Maybe there's a new edition, but either way it's not impossible to follow.
Keep at it and you'll get it.
[1] http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101626/index.htmlI thought the MSDN Getting Started Tutorial [1] wasn't bad. It walks you through step by step without many assumptions. It also contains references to detailed topics when you're ready to dig deeper.
[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms734712.aspxI'd recommend "Programming WCF Services" by Juval Löwy. Especially if you want to grow your service big, this book is a real help!
Tutorials and webcasts and books are great, but the only way I was really able to synthesize it all was to start making things. Build a couple projects, play with the endpoint configurations, introduce some deliberate faults to see how it works.
THEN after you've done some playing around, go back and (re)read Juval Lowy's book, and you'll get a lot out of it.
If you want to know the rest, particularly the differences between things like MSMQ and Web Services, I'd thoroughly recommend you read the first few chapters of the book "Enterprise Integration Patterns". Perhaps look at this site [1] and read about the various integration styles.
[1] http://www.eaipatterns.com/Just like Terry said the Learning WCF of Michelle is just great, ease written, nice examples. After that you can go further with the books of Microsoft / Judal Lovy (Programming WCF services). If you'd prefer online videos you should take a look at: http://www.pluralsight-training.net/microsoft/ (You will have to pay to view the vids but it's totally worth it).
Learn The ABCs Of Programming Windows Communication Foundation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163647.aspx
I actually went on a 5 day course called "WCF Master Class".. best, most valuable course I ever went on:
http://idesign.net/idesign/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=20 [1]
WCF is a big beast. Sure you can "get by" googling and so on, but the best way is to have face-to-face training, you will take so much more in.
This book is good and will definitely give you the core knowledge you need: http://www.amazon.com/Programming-WCF-Services-Juval-Lowy/dp/0596526997 [2]
Don't just "wing it", either read the book and take note.. or have formal training. WCF is excellent but only if you completely understand it.
[1] http://idesign.net/idesign/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=20