Welcome to the EndPoint!
Welcome to the Connected .NET blog, where we’ll focus on the stuff in the .NET Framework that connects systems together! This blog has been something that has been kicked around the halls here in Redmond for a little while now, and it's exciting to launch it with this first post!
The .NET Framework is broad foundational technology for Windows, comprised of many namespaces and libraries to cover different aspects of application development. And for each of these libraries, there are blogs that cover those. For example, there is a blog covering the base class library, another covering the Sync Framework, and another covering CardSpace. This blog is going to cover the aspects of .NET that connect systems together: specifically the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) pieces of the .NET Framework.
Since the release of the .NET Framework v3.5, we’ve had the opportunity to chat with customers and partners and learned: people want the information on WF and WCF to be more consumable and more easily discoverable. For example:
- Did you know that WCF does REST?
(Dino Chiesa did an excellent 'How To' on the topic, and Rob Bagby did a series of posts in his blog) - Did you know that WF has a Service Activity that can use WCF to communicate between workflows?
(This was a key improvement for WF in v3.5; we posted an article on this topic to MSDN in May) - Did you know that WCF is used for ASP.NET AJAX?
There’s so much information available in so many different places. While a quick search in [insert your favorite search site here] can locate the information, a key feedback is that people want it to be more consumable and discoverable. One step toward improving on that score is launching this blog.
This is a Microsoft cross-team blog - meaning that multiple groups here at Microsoft will be posting, including the WF/WCF development team, testing team, .NET product management, and some of the more influential folks in our field. Additionally, this blog will be consolidating a couple smaller team blogs into one place, and adding a few link collections to help WF/WCF novices and experts alike locate content. The goal is simple: this will be the one blog to subscribe to if you want to stay on top of WF and WCF stuff.
In the coming months, expect to hear from the Connected Systems team folks (myself, Kent Brown (yes - Kent recently joined the CSD team!), and Eileen Rumwell), some of your favorite product team bloggers (Kavita Kamani, Matt Winkler, as well as the Rules team and Performance team), and some of your favorite folks from the DPE (Rob Bagby and Ron Jacobs). The list of regulars will grow over time, and also expect to hear from guest posts from others.
In addition to instantiating this blog to help make content more discoverable, we relaunched of the homes on MSDN for WF and WCF last month. The new sites to provide a more dynamic, portal-like experience. And, over the coming months, you should expect to see the existing content for WF and WCF in the MSDN Library rationalized, updated, and expanded based on your feedback.
There are more changes to come. As always, your feedback is appreciated and welcomed.
Your buddy in .NET-Connectedness,
Cliff Simpkins
Comments
Anonymous
July 03, 2008
Thanks. A connected Blog was very much required. Vikas Goyal MVP - Connected Systems http://www.VikasGoyal.netAnonymous
August 27, 2008
First of all, "Hi"! As Cliff said , I've joined the Connected .NET Framework product management team