(or "The Wizard's Way from COM+ to Indigo")

As I have described here previously and as I have recently shown at the PDC, MVP and BPI events, the task of using the Windows Communication Foundation's COM+ Integration feature to produce a secure, reliable, transacted and interoperable service is not difficult. The typical syntax is as follows:

    ComSvcConfig.exe /install /application:BookSample
        /contract:BookLogic.Finance,IFinance /hosting:complus

This involves just a little bit of typing but it can get more wordy as more interfaces are included and explicit methods are specified. Now COM+ devs and admins are used to the glamor of the MMC and the incredible spinning balls UI so with Beta 2 of WCF there was scope for going beyond the command-line.

As a small part of the toolset that they are delivering with Beta 2 and beyond, the WCF Management Tools team have stepped up to bring some of the old UI magic back. A few of the screens follow (click for detail)...

Choose your component interface:

Choose the methods for the service contract (default to all):

Choose where you want to host the WCF service endpoints:

Kudos and thanks goes to Yizhan, Xiao and Justin from Alex’s remote team for making this a cool and easy thing.

Note: this is what we have for Beta 2 and is not the RTM version of the tool - there is still time to shoehorn some spinning balls in there somewhere.