Currently reading quite a heavy WCF book. I have used it myself in production just the once, using tcp, worked a charm. Anyway what are your opinions on this technology, is it here to stay, is it worth the time invested learning all the complex features etc etc?
+4
A:
I think it is here to stay. It is easily configurable for moving endpoints, it seems robust and allows you to do (pretty much) everything you could do in web services and remoting without the overhead of separate implementations.
I can see where you are coming from, with MS's recent leaks about ongoing support for, and maintenance of Linq to SQL, but I see WCF as a different beast altogether. This is a technology that allows interoperability, as well as de-complixifying (I know this isn't a real word, but it should be) communications between systems.
ZombieSheep
2008-11-18 15:56:58
I'll add to that. WCF is the culmination of the lessons learned by MS in creating their earlier Web Service and Remoting infrastructures. And there were a LOT of lessons that needed to be learned! ;-)
Dave Markle
2009-04-11 14:46:20
+1
A:
I second what ZombieSheep says. Although complex, it greatly simplifies distributing applications across physical and logical boundaries, facilitates interoperability, and mostly decouples implementation details like ports/protocols for communication.
It's definitely worth the time to learn, although depending on the solution, it may sometimes be overkill. I think you'll find that configuration will become easier as versions continue -- although that's pure speculation.
While Linq to SQL had a larger cousin in the Entity Framework, WCF has no such relative. It's here to stay.
Mike L
2008-11-18 18:54:06