The new Microsoft Integration and Connected Systems User Group (MICSUG) meets for the first time this week.

This user group provides information on connected systems, workflow, and business process integration on the Microsoft platform. The technology focus is on Microsoft BizTalk Server, BizTalk adapters and accelerators, Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Workflow Foundation, the Web Services Architecture, and XML technologies. Members are invited from Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.

The group meets every second month on the fourth Thursday of the month at 7:00 PM in Microsoft's Reston, Virginia facility. At our next meeting, Brian Noyes of iDesign will speak about Connecting Smart Client Applications with Windows Communication Foundation. This will be on February 23rd 2006 at 7:00 PM in Microsoft's Reston facility. Directions are here: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/info/usaoffices/midatlantic/mtc_reston.mspx

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is the next generation remote communications API for Windows. Once WCF is released, you will no longer program specifically for Web services, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, or MSMQ. You will just write your code to use WCF and configure WCF to use the appropriate communications channel/protocol under the covers.  This opens up a whole new and much cleaner approach for connecting smart client applications to the middle tier and to other clients in a peer-to-peer fashion. This talk will introduce the programming model of WCF and show how to use it to connect a smart client application to a back-end service using a variety of protocols. It will introduce how to address things like making calls asynchronously, handling callbacks from the server, security, transactions, and peer-to-peer capabilities.