Complete Windows Communication Foundation

Course Overview

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a new object model for building distributed applications using .NET 3.0. WCF was designed to expose the current multitude of Windows remoting APIs (web servcies, MSMQ, Com+, peer-to-peer) using a single unified object model. In this course, attendees will examine the overall WCF object model, binding choices, host options and the use of declarative markup to specify the underlying infrastructure.

Audience

This course is designed for experienced .NET 2.0 developers who are interested in learning how to build applications using the .NET 3.0 Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) API.

Skills Gained

Delegates will learn;

• Grounding in WCF Programming Model
• Understand Binding Choices
• Understand Data Serialization Choices

Prerequisites

Attendees must have a firm background in .NET 2.0 programming; equivalent to Intertech’s Complete C# or Complete VB.

Course Outline

Introducing WCF

• Review the role of interface based programming.
• Review the role of XML web services.
• Define Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs).
• Review the core distributed APIs of the Microsoft Windows OS
• Understand the motivation behind Windows Communication Foundation (WCF).
• Take a first look at building and testing WCF services.

Building WCF Hosts and Clients

• Learn to create self-hosting WCF services.
• Declaratively define hosting logic within *.config files.
• Define hosting logic programmatically.
• Understand the role of Metadata Exchange (MEX).
• Generate and make use of client proxies.
• Learn to host WCF services in a Windows Service.
• Learn to host WCF services in IIS virtual directories.
• Define and invoke ‘One Way’ method operations.
• Learn to invoke WCF service methods asynchronously.

Building Robust WCF Services

• Examine the details of the ServiceContract and OperationalContract attributes.
• Create custom data contracts.
• Know how to safely version WCF services.
• Overview the attributes used to format SOAP messages.
• Map CLR exceptions to agnostic SOAP Faults.

Stateful WCF Services

• Understand how to build WCF services that maintain state.
• Examine server context modes.
• Learn to control server deactivation at the method level.
• Know the role of sequential ordering of operations.
• Know the role of WS-ReliableMessaging.

Introduction to WCF Security Topics

• Overview the role of WCF security.
• Examine techniques to secure the transportation of data.
• Examine security techniques for TCP-based WCF services.
• Examine security techniques for HTTP-based WCF services.

Appendix: COM+ Integration

• Review the role of the COM+ framework.
• Examine WCF => COM+ integration services.
• Generate COM+ service wrappers.
• Create WCF clients which communicate with COM+ service wrappers.
• Survey other flavours of WCF service / caller interoperability.