FAQ

General Information  2

What is Windows Communication Foundation?  2

How will Windows Communication Foundation change the way developers build applications?  2

Will Windows Communication Foundation have any effect on IT Pros?  3

How do I get started building Web services with Windows Communication Foundation?  3

 

Ship Schedule and Vehicles  3

When will Windows Communication Foundation ship?  3

What does “Go Live” mean?  3

What is WinFX?  4

What’s new for WCF in the January WinFX CTP?  4

Is Windows Communication Foundation only available on Windows Vista?  4

How will Windows Communication Foundation be delivered?  4

How does Windows Communication Foundation relate to Visual Studio 2005?  5

 

Upgrade and Interoperability  5

Will Windows Communication Foundation be backwards compatible with existing distributed systems technologies?  5

Is Windows Communication Foundation going to interoperate with my existing applications?  5

Will I be forced to upgrade or rewrite my existing code to Windows Communication Foundation when it ships?  5

How hard will it be to upgrade to Windows Communication Foundation?  5

How much of a learning curve will developers experience in adopting Windows Communication Foundation as a way to build connected systems?  6

What is the relationship of Windows Communication Foundation to Web Services Enhancements and to ASP.NET Web services?  6

What should I do to be ready to take advantage of Windows Communication Foundation when it ships?  6

 

Features and Implementation  7

What is Windows Communication Foundation's encoding on the wire?  7

Does Windows Communication Foundation support peer-to-peer interaction?  7

Does Windows Communication Foundation support both synchronous and asynchronous messaging?  7

Does Windows Communication Foundation support transactions that can be coordinated across different platforms?  7

Does Windows Communication Foundation support REST?  7

 

Windows Communication Foundation and Service Orientation  8

What is Service-Orientation and how is it related to Windows Communication Foundation?  8

Why is service orientation important?  8

Does service-oriented development conflict with object-oriented development?  8

How will Windows Communication Foundation make service-oriented development easier?  8

 

Windows Communication Foundation and Standards  9

Will Windows Communication Foundation applications interoperate with Web services built with other technologies?  9

What specifications will Windows Communication Foundation support?  9

 

 

General Information

What is Windows Communication Foundation?

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF, previously codenamed “Indigo”) is Microsoft’s unified framework for building and running service-oriented applications using managed code.  It enables developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate across platforms and interoperate with existing investments.  WCF combines and extends the capabilities of existing Microsoft distributed systems technologies, including Enterprise Services, System.Messaging, .NET Remoting, ASMX, and WSE to deliver a unified development experience across multiple axes, including distance (cross-process, cross-machine, cross-subnet, cross-intranet, cross-Internet), hosts (ASP.NET, EXE, WPF, Windows Forms, NT Service, COM+), protocols (TCP, HTTP, cross-process, custom), and security models (SAML, Kerberos, X509, username/password, custom).

 

How will Windows Communication Foundation change the way developers build applications?

WCF radically simplifies development of distributed applications in several ways.  First, WCF reduces complexity by unifying the silos that exist with today’s distributed technology stacks (Enterprise Services, System.Messaging, .NET Remoting, ASMX, and WSE).  This enables developers to compose distributed applications using the best features of each of today’s stacks and maximizes developer productivity through a rich, intuitive attribute-based programming model.  Second, WCF facilitates interoperability with both partner platforms through the WS-* standards and with applications built on today’s Microsoft technologies.  Finally, WCF is the first development framework built from the ground up on the principle of service-orientation, enabling developers to build loosely coupled applications that can be incrementally updated as business needs change.

 

Will Windows Communication Foundation have any benefits for IT Pros?

Sure!  WCF’s unified programming model simplifies the deployment of applications built with WCF.  Also, WCF enables the separation of IT concerns from developer concerns through config files that control the configuration settings of an application.  This gives IT pros the power to manage relevant features of an application (such as transport or reliability settings) without redesigning or even rebuilding it.  

 

How do I get started building Web services with Windows Communication Foundation?

This site has plenty of information to help you get started starting services.  Check out the Getting Started panel for some ideas. 

 


Ship Schedule and Vehicles

When will Windows Communication Foundation ship?

Our goal is to release a great product to customers. We plan to ship the final version in 2006 as part of Windows Vista, the next version of Windows.  We just released our January Go Live release, which you can now use in your production environment.

 

What does “Go Live” mean?

Our Go Live releases are Beta quality releases that have additional reliability testing to support production deployments. Usually Microsoft’s prerelease EULAs don’t permit production deployments of customer applications. However, in response to strong customer demand, we’ve provided an addendum to the EULA for the January WCF Go Live Release (called a Go Live License) that lets you deploy applications based on these products in production environments.

 

What is WinFX?

WinFX is a unified, managed-code programming model that extends the .NET Framework 2.0 and enables you to build secure, next-generation, Windows-based applications.  WinFX includes Windows Communication Foundation, Windows Presentation Foundation, and Windows Workflow Foundation.  It ships as a core part of Windows Vista, and will also be available for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003.

 

What’s new for WCF in the January WinFX CTP?

We’ve made a number of changes since our Beta 1 release, and of course we’ve continued to invest in the fundamentals of WCF:  usability, reliability, security, performance, and interoperability.  Some specific improvements include:

·          support for REST/POX:  this release includes support for REST, which provides a mechanism to make simple Web services calls using “Plain Old XML” (POX) over HTTP

·          management tools:  SvcConfigEditor and SvcTraceViewer make it easier for you to manage, monitor, and maintain your services

·          updated bindings:  the standard bindings have been refactored to better fulfill customer needs out of the box

 

Is Windows Communication Foundation only available on Windows Vista?

No, Windows Communication Foundation will also be available on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 as a part of the WinFX Runtime Components.

 

How will Windows Communication Foundation be delivered?

Windows Communication Foundation will be delivered as a core part of Windows Vista.  Support for WCF on Windows XP and Windows 2003 will also be freely available.

 

How does Windows Communication Foundation relate to Visual Studio 2005?

Visual Studio 2005 is the latest release of the .NET Framework and Visual Studio development tools. Windows Communication Foundation is a set of additional managed class libraries that provide a unified framework for building advanced Web services. Windows Communication Foundation extends the .NET Framework 2.0 and is fully compatible with Visual Studio 2005, meaning that developers using Visual Studio 2005 will be able to program against the Windows Communication Foundation class libraries using the language of their choice, their existing skills, and a familiar environment.

 


Upgrade and Interoperability

Will Windows Communication Foundation be backwards compatible with existing distributed systems technologies?

Windows Communication Foundation represents the next logical version for each of today's distributed systems stacks. As such, developers using today's technologies will be able to apply their existing skills to Windows Communication Foundation application development. In addition, Windows Communication Foundation will enable side-by-side operation of applications built with existing technologies and Windows Communication Foundation-based applications. Finally, Microsoft will provide guidance for developers upgrading existing code from ASMX, .NET Remoting, .NET Enterprise services, WSE, System.Messaging to Windows Communication Foundation.

 

Is Windows Communication Foundation going to interoperate with my existing applications?

WCF provides wire-level interoperability with WSE3, System.Messaging, and ASMX applications, and tooling to expose Enterprise Services and COM+ applications as WCF services and to access services from COM-based environments.  This means that, with minimal or no changes to code, applications built with these technologies will be able to call WCF services and be callable by WCF services.

 

Will I be forced to upgrade or rewrite my existing code to Windows Communication Foundation when it ships?

No, you can continue running applications built with today's technologies, and these applications can peacefully coexist with Windows Communication Foundation applications side-by-side. Upgrading existing code is optional and can be done on an incremental basis.

 

How much of a learning curve will developers experience in adopting Windows Communication Foundation as a way to build connected systems?

Because Windows Communication Foundation is designed as a logical next version of today’s distributed systems technologies, developers using today's technologies will be immediately familiar with the Windows Communication Foundation programming model. They will be able to take advantage of the programming model because it is designed to fit naturally with existing .NET Framework programming concepts and is accessible using any .NET language (C#, VB.NET, J#, C++, etc).

 

What is the relationship of Windows Communication Foundation to Web Services Enhancements and to ASP.NET Web services?

Web Services Enhancements (WSE) augments ASP.NET Web services support with key WS-* features; Windows Communication Foundation is the next-generation Web services infrastructure for Windows. WSE 3.0, which shipped in November 2005, is wire-level compatible with WCF and Microsoft will provide guidance to customers and developers on upgrading WSE code to Windows Communication Foundation.

 

What should I do to be ready to take advantage of Windows Communication Foundation when it ships?

·                                Build services using the ASP.NET (ASMX) Web service model.

·                                Enhance your ASMX service with WSE if you need the WSE feature set (including end-to-end security).

·                                Use object technology in a service's implementation.

·                                Use System.Messaging if you need the reliable messaging and queuing features in MSMQ.

·                                ASMX-avoid or abstract using low-level extensibility such as the HTTP Context object.

·                                .NET Remoting-avoid or abstract using low-level extensibility such as .NET Remoting sinks and channels.

·                                Enterprise services-avoid passing object references inside of ES.

·                                Do not use COM+ APIs-use System.EnterpriseServices.

·                                Do not use MSMQ APIs-use System.Messaging.

 


Features and Implementation

What is Windows Communication Foundation's encoding on the wire?

By default, Windows Communication Foundation uses SOAP (perhaps with some WS-* extensions), represented on the wire in its usual text-based XML encoding. When two Windows Communication Foundation-based services communicate with each other, however, it makes sense to optimize this communication. All of the same features are provided, including reliable messaging, security, and transactions, but the wire encoding used is an optimized binary version of SOAP. Messages still conform to the data structure of a SOAP message, referred to as its Infoset, but their encoding uses a binary representation of that Infoset rather than the standard angle-brackets-and-text format of XML.

 

Does Windows Communication Foundation support peer-to-peer interaction?

Yes. Windows Communication Foundation includes a new technology called the PeerChannel, which enables peer-to-peer communication.

 

Does Windows Communication Foundation support both synchronous and asynchronous messaging?

Yes. Windows Communication Foundation supports multiple message patterns, including one-way, request/response, two-way (duplex), and queued.

 

Does Windows Communication Foundation support transactions that can be coordinated across different platforms?

Yes. Windows Communication Foundation plugs into the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) extensibility model and supports WS-AtomicTransaction as well as WS-Coordination to enable coordinated transactions across platforms.

 

Does Windows Communication Foundation support REST?

Yes.  REST is a pattern that utilizes only the HTTP and XML layers of the Web services architecture.  WCF supports building applications at that lower layer as well as building applications that utilize the higher layers – SOAP for transport-independence and asynchronous communication, WSDL and WS-Policy for rich description and toolability, and WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging, and WS-AtomicTransaction for enterprise-grade security, delivery, and consistency assurances.

 


Windows Communication Foundation and Service Orientation

What is service orientation and how is it related to Windows Communication Foundation?

Service Orientation is a specific set of architectural principles for building loosely coupled services that help developers maximize the return on their application investments over time. The services have explicit boundaries, are autonomous, share schema and contracts, and determine compatibility based on policy. Applications based on these principles provide benefits in maintainability, reusability, and manageability of connected systems. Windows Communication Foundation is the first programming model built from the ground up for building service-oriented applications.

 

Why is service orientation important?

Loosely-coupled applications built on the tenets of service orientation yield benefits in maintainability, reusability, and manageability of connected systems. Service-oriented applications also more closely reflect real-world processes and relationships. Microsoft sees service orientation as a way to develop a set of connected systems that optimize communications across a business, connecting people, information, and devices.

 

Does service-oriented development conflict with object-oriented development?

No. Service-oriented development complements object-oriented (OO) development. Object-oriented development continues to fulfill an important role in the internal design of services. Service-orientation deals with how to interconnect services to build connected systems.

 

How will Windows Communication Foundation make service-oriented development easier?

Today, it is difficult to build service-oriented applications due to the lack of an intuitive service-oriented programming model. Web services provide a great start, but lack support for more advanced communication, including secure, reliable, or transacted services. Windows Communication Foundation provides both an intuitive service-oriented programming model and the advanced functionality to create service-oriented applications that interoperate across organizational and platform boundaries.

 


Windows Communication Foundation and Standards

Will Windows Communication Foundation applications interoperate with Web services built with other technologies?

Absolutely. By default, services built with Windows Communication Foundation will communicate with other services based on the interoperable WS-* Web services specifications. This means that Windows Communication Foundation services will communicate with any application built on an infrastructure that also conforms to these standards. Microsoft is deeply committed to platform interoperability and is an active member of key standards organizations defining the latest Web services standards. Microsoft also continues to host and engage in public interoperability workshops to help ensure cross-platform communication with other vendors.

 

What specifications will Windows Communication Foundation support?

Windows Communication Foundation will support a broad range of Web services standards, including basic standards (XML, XSD, XPath, SOAP, WSDL) and advanced standards and specifications that comprise the WS-* architecture. These include WS-Addressing, WS-Policy, WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-SecureConversation, WS-ReliableMessaging, WS-AtomicTransaction, WS-Coordination, WS-Policy, and MTOM.

 

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