Introduction

The Windows Communication Foundation, which was code-named Indigo, is a technology that allows pieces of software to communicate with one another. There are many other such technologies, including the Component Object Model and Distributed Component Object Model, Remote Method Invocation, Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ), and WebSphere MQ. Each of those works well in a particular scenario, not so well in others, and is of no use at all in some cases. The Windows Communication Foundation is meant to work well in any circumstance in which a Microsoft .NET assembly must exchange data with any other software entity. In fact, the Windows Communication Foundation is meant to always be the very best option. Its performance is at least on par with that of any other alternative and is usually better; it offers at least as many features and probably several more. It is certainly always the easiest solution to program.

Concretely, the Windows Communication Foundation consists of a small number of .NET libraries with several new sets of classes that it adds to the Microsoft .NET Framework class library, for use with the second version, the 2.0 version, of the .NET Common Language Runtime. It also adds some facilities for hosting Windows Communication Foundation solutions to the 5.1 and later versions of Internet Information Services (IIS), the web server built into Windows operating systems.