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Were You Able to Get Started Quickly with WCF?

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The other day I noticed Brad Abrams plugging the book Silverlight 3 Jumpstart (I’ve only flipped through it so I don’t have a personal recommendation on whether new Silverlight developers should get it). The thing that struck me about the Jumpstart book though is that it is very short for a book, just over 200 pages, while still quite a lot longer and more organized than what you’ll find from most online resources.

The basic flow of the text is like this:

- Why use the technology

Minimal development needs to get started
  • Walkthrough of using basic features
  • Brief list of some of the more advanced features
  • Short discussions of more specialized development topics

That’s pretty much the whole book. You could read through it in one sitting if you wanted to. The average WCF book is 600 pages but covers far more topics at far greater depth, even at the introductory level.

Are books such as the Jumpstart book a missing niche for learning WCF?

Do you think that other resources, such as documentation, blogs, online whitepapers, and long format books, have helped you learn WCF more easily than a short format book would?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    September 02, 2009
    For me, using WCF for the standard scenarios (basic SOAP web services configured via the app.config or web.config file) was dead simple. The problem came when I wanted to do something slightly different from the norm such as DPWS, IIS compression (coming in .NET 4), WS-Discovery over UDP (coming in .NET 4), IoC techniques in IIS (coming in .NET 4), logical addressing, any of the WS-* standards, and so forth. The MSDN documentation is a bit scattered when it comes to these topics, which led me to reflect on the WCF assemblies, which led me to a migraine. What I need is a reference that discusses the various building blocks of WCF in detail, how they work together, and how I can use them to implement new scenarios. WCF is a fairly open platform, but its openness is hampered by its self-obfuscation. Also I'd like a reference on WCF tracing ... that could be an entire textbook of its own.

  • Anonymous
    September 02, 2009
    This is an easy one: http://www.netfxharmonics.com/2008/11/Understanding-WCF-Services-in-Silverlight-2

  • Anonymous
    September 03, 2009
    Michele Bustamante's book (http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596101626/) is a pretty good starter if you have experience with services from the ASMX days

  • Anonymous
    September 03, 2009
    Michele's book is the one I currently recommend for an introductory WCF text.  It's a thick book though.  I think it's right around that average length of 600 pages.  It would probably take a while to get through and understand all of the material. The Jumpstart book is an interesting format because I think you could get through it in 1 or 2 sessions.  You'd learn a lot less of course but I think you'd know enough afterwards to start tackling other resources.

  • Anonymous
    September 09, 2009
    I'd appreciate a JumpStart book if it also explained some common scenarios. For instance, for an Intranet Silverlight application I need to use Windows authentication and impersonation, accessing the database (via WCF) as the user running the application (to avoid additional user account administration). Seems quite common to me but I am having a hard time finding how to configure IIS and WCF. I hesitate picking up a 600 page volume.