Programming WCF Services [Paperback]

I struggled between purchasing this book or Michelle's 'Learning WCF', being a developer for going on 20 years now I didn't want to get another beginners 101 book. Having read many articles and a few books by Juval and knowing I like theory not wizardry I went with Juval's.

I must say I am disappointed so far, in Juval's style of great theory he just jumps right in and you are pretty much in over your head off the bat. Not that you can't understand what he is saying but the way it is explained just doesn't help understand WCF in general. While I am only on chapter 3 I had to look forward and see that it only gets deeper, it seems to explain the pieces but not how they fit together.

I had to go back and look at the intended audience for the book. It says nothing about prior WCF experience just an experienced .NET, OO developer. I have been messing with WCF for a few weeks, played with WSSF, I have built a number of production web and windows service applications as well as worked with remoting quite a bit.

I bought the book to get more detail/theory but must say it has not helped me a bit thru chapter 3. The book hasn't provided any direction on putting this stuff together into a working example and I think that is what it is missing.

I have little doubt when I get over the initial WCF learning curve this book will be a great asset but for now I'm going to shelve it and look elsewhere.

This text (which I'll refer to as P) is one of the better WCF books, but there's plenty of room for improvement. The other reviews have plugged a lot of the strengths, so I'll keep this brief.

The real way to review this book is to compare it to the other leading title (Resnick's Essentials of WCF, which I'll call E). Since both books are missing a lot of information, but are in some ways complementary, if you read both, you get about 75% of the basics.

Organization: E is uniform and iterative, and provides introductions and summaries for those who read systematically. P is uneven and non-iterative. Some P chapters are strong, but E looks as if someone consciously went through the entire book with a fine-toothed comb (so to speak).

Transactions: E barely treats transactions, but P dedicates (IIRC) a chapter to them and takes a stand on using them in the design guide.

Hosting: The P hosting section is weak, and the coverage of WAS (which the author recommends for W2K8 deployments) is seriously deficient. Properly hosting and tuning a WCF application is half of the battle, and that battle is almost entirely left as an exercise for the reader. E does a much better job of explaining hosting, but, unfortunately, is also deficient in coverage. OTOH, P has an introductory section of using service host factories to gain some programmatic control over hosting from inside the app, something that E ignores. P also includes hosting advice in the nice guidelines section at the end.

Design: The P design standards section is a nice checklist, but it's not argued properly and it's difficult to find the rationale for some of the points made in the text. OTOH, E doesn't have anything like this. Anyone can read the MSDN/P&P literature on creating WFC services; what readers really need is an informed explanation of how to do it correctly. P takes a stab at it, but E doesn't. Neither text covers other important topics like testability, flexibility, and maintainability as they relate to WCF programming. Both books treat SOA and integration very superficially. P takes a basic stand on good contract design, but E doesn't.

Solution structure/VS project templates/etc: Neither book does a good job covering the different templates (WFC app vs. WCF service library), or how WCF layering should take place. P advocates putting "service logic" in a DLL, but that's about it. E ignores the topic.

Until the next version comes out later this year, I can definitely recommend getting P, but would also recommend getting E to fill in some of the gaps. It would be nice to see not only Lowy expand the design principles section, but maybe also make proper design a first-class component of the book (or maybe even publish an "Effect WCF" book).

I was a fan of Juval Lowys book .net components so when I wanted to learn WCF I got this book straight away. I found it very difficulty to understand in the beginning as I had no hands on experience on WCF. So I got the book WCF Step by Step by John Sharp and did the exercises in his book. After this when I read Juval Luvys book it makes perfect sense. So in short if you are a beginner to WCF this is not the book for you. Get hands on experience by coding some example, struggle through the configuration and errors and then if you want something to refresh your memory or add more theoretical depth to your knowledge read this book.

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