Chapter 1. WCF and SOA Basics

In today's world, implementing distributed systems that provide business value in a reliable fashion presents many challenges. We take many features for granted when developing nondistributed systems—features that can become issues when working with disparate distributed systems. Although some of these challenges are obvious (such as a loss of connectivity leading to data being lost or corrupted), for other aspects—such as tightly coupled systems—the dependencies between various system components make it cost prohibitive to make changes to meet the demands of the business. Business processes are quite often supported by systems that run on different platforms and technologies both within and outside of the organization. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a mechanism that enables organizations to facilitate communication between systems running on multiple platforms.

During the past decade, a lot of research has been done in the field of distributed computing. Microsoft and other leading vendors have come up with various distributed technologies. Each of these technologies reduces the convolution of building rich applications and lowers development costs. The latest from Microsoft is Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), which provides a uniform way of developing distributed applications by providing a service-oriented programming model.