Chris Bowen's Blog : WCF

Essential WCF Featured on ARCast.TV

cbowen — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:15:36 GMT

Thanks to some great work by my colleague Bob Familiar, there's a new ARCast.TV episode featuring interviews with Steve Resnick, Rich Crane, and me.

In this episode, Bob interviews us about WCF and our new book "Essential Windows Communication Foundation for .NET Framework 3.5".

ARCast.TV - Essential WCF

Check it out on Channel 9!

-Chris

Special Boston Scalability User Group Event - 4/23

cbowen — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 05:31:03 GMT

On April 23rd, the (recently-formed!) Boston Scalability User Group will serve as host for a special visit by Microsoft's Greg Leake to speak about the .NET StockTrader application and scalability in distributed SOA systems.

The meeting will be on Wednesday, April 23rd, from 6-8 PM at the Microsoft offices at 201 Jones Road in Waltham, MA.

Please register for the event as pizza (and some raffled software) will be provided.

If you have an interest in performance, interoperability, and distributed systems scalability, especially with ASP.NET and WCF, then this is a session I strongly recommend you consider attending.

Here's a description of the event:

NET StockTrader/SOA Session

Subject: The .NET StockTrader is an end-to-end sample application for .NET Enterprise Application Server technologies. It is a distributed service-oriented application based on the .NET Framework, specifically using Windows Communication Foundation and ASP.NET. This session will illustrate how many of the .NET enterprise development technologies are made for building highly scalable, rich "enterprise-connected" applications. Greg will also be doing a full demo of this application and how he has designed this application to be a benchmark kit.

Speaker: Greg Leake works in the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft. Greg has been at the company for about 15 years and have held several positions including a few in the Developer Division. He currently spends most of his time developing new enterprise software and samples that focus on interoperability, scalability and performance. Go to the link below to find out more about Greg and his work on the .NET Framework.

See you there!

-Chris

"Essential WCF" on the Shelves!

cbowen — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:10:04 GMT

On The Shelf!

I popped in to my local bookstore (and ended up grabbing a copy of "LINQ in Action", which I've heard great things about) and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but hot-off-the-press copies of my latest authoring journey... "Essential Windows Communication Foundation"!

It's a great feeling to have all the research, coding, and long nights of writing actually take material shape on a shelf in a bookstore.

(Being a proud pop, I couldn't resist a side-by-side pic with my previous book, "Professional Visual Studio 2005 Team System".)

The InformIT Interview

We were recently contacted by informIT for an interview about the book, which you can read here - "So, What is This WCF Anyway?"

More about Essential WCF

Since we'd specifically timed the book to include details of .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, we're among the first to cover some new WCF topics.

Here's a glance at what's inside:

Foreword xxv
Preface xxvii
Chapter 1: Basics 1
Chapter 2: Contracts 33
Chapter 3: Channels 91
Chapter 4: Bindings 111
Chapter 5: Behaviors 181
Chapter 6: Serialization and Encoding 241
Chapter 7: Hosting 287
Chapter 8: Security 315
Chapter 9: Diagnostics 375
Chapter 10: Exception Handling 403
Chapter 11: Workflow Services 423
Chapter 12: Peer Networking 459
Chapter 13: Programmable Web 503
Appendix: Advanced Topics 537
Index 553

I've already heard from a number of you who are delving into Essential WCF. Let me know if you have any feedback about the book.

I encourage you to take a moment to check out my coauthors' blogs:

Thanks Abound

Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible - my coauthors in "unbounded awesomeness"* - Steve and Rich, the great team at Addison-Wesley who kept the wheels turning well and in the right direction, and our technical reviewers who did a great job helping to ensure we were spot-on:

Nicholas Allen
Jeff Barnes
Keith Brown
Tom Fuller
John Justice
Ron Landers
Willy-Peter Schaub
Sowmy Srinivasan

Special thanks to Steve Maine, who not only provided great support during creation, but who also took the time to pen the book's forward.

And of course, thanks to you in the community for your support!

-Chris

* Note to Steve Toub, yes, that's the awesomeness' UBound() we're talking about. :)

Essential WCF to the Printer!

cbowen — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:02:52 GMT

In the rush of the past week, I forgot to post that "Essential Windows Communication Foundation" has gone to the printer and will be shipping soon!

I joined up with fellow New England area Microsoft guys Steve Resnick and Rich Crane (whose post reminded me to write this) to create this book and I'm very excited by the results.

One of our goals was to incorporate the new WCF features of the .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008. So, in addition to the core WCF topics, you'll also see coverage of areas such as RSS/ATOM syndication, peer networking, REST, Workflow integration, and new tools/integration with VS 2008.

Another goal was to have the book on shelves in time for the worldwide 2008 launch events (BTW, I'll be speaking at most of the ones in the northeast), and it seems that's going to happen!

For those of you who pick up a copy, you have our thanks! We hope it helps you along your way to creating fantastic WCF applications with .NET 3.x.

-Chris

New CTPs of .NET Framework 3.5, Acropolis, and ADO.NET Entity Framework

cbowen — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 04:01:06 GMT

This week brought a host of new CTPs (Community Technology Previews) to the MSDN Download Center:

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP
download

.NET Framework 3.5 builds incrementally on the new features added in .NET Framework 3.0, for example, Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Windows CardSpace. In addition, .NET Framework 3.5 contains a number of new features in several technology areas. These new features have been added as new assemblies to avoid breaking changes. They include the following:

Deep integration of Language Integrated Query (LINQ) and data awareness. This new feature will let you write code written in LINQ-enabled languages to filter, enumerate, and create projections of several types of SQL data, collections, XML, and DataSets by using the same syntax.
ASP.NET AJAX lets you create more efficient, more interactive, and highly-personalized Web experiences that work across all the most popular browsers.
New Web protocol support for building WCF services including AJAX, JSON, REST, POX, RSS, ATOM, and several new WS-* standards.
Full tooling support for WF, WCF, and WPF, including the new workflow-enabled services technology.
New classes in .NET Framework 3.5 base class library (BCL) address the most common customer requests.

ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP

download

This CTP contains updates to the ADO.NET Entity Framework since the Visual Studio Codename "Orcas" Beta 1 release, including changes in Object Services, Query, Entity Client, and the Entity Data Model Wizard in Visual Studio. Some of the new features include IPOCO, detaching from long-running ObjectContext instances, multiple entity sets per type, support for referential integrity constraints, span support, transactions, serialization, no more default constructors in code-generated classes, improvements to stored procedure support, access to the underlying store connection, directory macros in the entity connection string to support hosted scenarios, native SQL read-only views, UNICODE support in Entity SQL, query plan caching, and canonical functions in Entity SQL.

Microsoft Codename "Acropolis" July CTP
download

Building on the vision of software + services, Microsoft Code Name “Acropolis” makes it easier to build and manage modular, business-focused, client applications for Microsoft Windows with the .NET Framework. It builds on the rich capabilities of Microsoft Windows and the .NET Framework, including the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), by providing tools and pre-built components that help developers quickly assemble an application from loosely-coupled parts and services. Code Name “Acropolis” reduces the complexities of building occasionally connected client applications and provides the ability to assemble and reconfigure systems without having to write as much code. It is part of the .NET Client Futures release, Microsoft’s preview of upcoming technologies in Microsoft Windows client development, available now at www.windowsclient.net.

Technorati tags: Acropolis, WPF, .NET 3.0, ADO.NET, WCF, WF, .NET

Announcing: Essential Windows Communication Foundation

cbowen — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 15:33:09 GMT

Word's getting out, so it's time to acknowledge it on this blog.

If you were at TechEd, you may have noticed copies of a sample chapter of Essential Windows Communication Foundation being given out at the Addison-Wesley booth.

The eagle eyed among you (I heard from a bunch of people, actually) noticed the author listing on the front...

I'm very happy to be working with some of the best minds in WCF I know, Steve Resnick and Rich Crane. Steve and Rich are fellow Microsoft guys based at the Microsoft Technology Center in Waltham, where they work with customers on this technology every day. Steve and Rich are doing the lion's share of the chapters and I'm writing several chapters in my areas of speciality.

It's also good to be working on a .NET Development Series book, with a rich heritage of solid developer titles that have come before us in the series - Essential ASP.NET, Essential .NET, Framework Design Guidelines, and others.

So, when?

Look for the book near the time when Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 are released. That's certainly no coincidence as we're writing everything from the ground up to be current with the changes to WCF that those technologies are bringing.

-Chris

Technorati tags: WCF, Books, .NET 3.0, Windows Communication Foundation

Chris Bowen's Blog : WCF

Essential WCF Featured on ARCast.TV

Special Boston Scalability User Group Event - 4/23

"Essential WCF" on the Shelves!

Essential WCF to the Printer!

New CTPs of .NET Framework 3.5, Acropolis, and ADO.NET Entity Framework

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP download

ADO.NET Entity Framework June 2007 CTP

download

Microsoft Codename "Acropolis" July CTP download

Announcing: Essential Windows Communication Foundation

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 June 2007 CTP
download

Microsoft Codename "Acropolis" July CTP
download