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amrameshreddy.blog.comCHAPTER 2■ ■ ■Introducing WCF BasicsDuring 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. Eachof the technologies reduces the convolution of building rich applications and lowers developmentcosts. The latest from Microsoft is Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), thenext-generation uniform way of developing distributed applications by providing a serviceorientedprogramming model.WCF (formerly known as Indigo) handles the communication infrastructure of WindowsVista and has been extended to Windows XP and Windows 2003 through the .NET Framework3.0 (formerly known as WinFX). The .NET Framework 3.0 is a managed programming modelfor Windows (Windows XP, Windows 2003, and Windows Vista) that is designed to replace theWin32 application programming interface (API) in future releases. WCF provides the communicationinfrastructure that allows you to create diverse ranges of applications through itssimplified model. Based on the notion of services, WCF contains the best features of today’sdistributed technology stack to develop the connected systems.After completing this chapter, you will have the following knowledge:• You’ll know about existing distributed technologies and their pitfalls.• You’ll know about the key architectural concepts that underpin WCF.• You’ll have seen a high-level overview of WCF’s features.• You’ll understand how WCF unifies existing distributed technologies.Introducing the Microsoft Remote ObjectInvocation ModelMicrosoft started its remote invocation technologies with Distributed Component ObjectModel (DCOM), which extended Component Object Model (COM). Then, .NET introducedtechnologies such as .NET Remoting and XML web services. We’ll now cover these technologiesin bit more detail.ramrameshreddyramrameshreddy25