WCF Advantages

It is time for the big customers to move to WCF.

WCF is 5 years in the market. We are moving into the third version (WCF 4.0)  and there is no doubt that WCF is mature enough for the big customers (who hate to take risks).

The managers ask me: Why WCF ? So I wrote this short summary for executives to read:

WCF is a unified framework for rapidly building service oriented applications.WCF is the most powerful of all distributed applications frameworks, yet it is the simplest to work with. WCF introduce the following advantages:

·         Simple programming model

o   Low learning curve

o   Short development time.

o   Similar object model for all communication technologies.

o   Simple debugging and maintenance

·         WCF support WS* standards

o   With WCF it is possible to enjoy the capabilities introduced by WS* Standards like:

§  Security

§  Federation

§  Transactions (simple and distributed )

§  Reliable messaging

§  Routing (WS Addressing)

§  Policy (WS Policy)

§  Metadata exchange

§  Service Discovery

o   Because WCF implements known standards it interoperable with other frameworks (for example all J2EE frameworks)

·         Performance

o   WCF has the best performance in comparison to other services connectivity frameworks.

·         Extensibility

o   WCF has numerous extension points where you change its behavior or make it implement your protocols and constraints.

o   WCF can enable communication between SOA applications in any communication protocols including proprietary ones.

·         Communication patterns

o   Support for many communication patterns like:

§  Request response

§  One Way (Datagram or asynchronous calls)

§  Duplex

§  Pub-sub

§  Streaming

·         Support for advanced topologies

o   Content based routing

o   Broker

o   Service façade

o   Custom

·         Support for REST

o   WCF is a full RESTful framework

o   It is possible to create syndication Feeds in several formats.

o   Intimate HTTP and URI support.

·         Known and leading technology

o   WCF Microsoft's leading service oriented technology thus all SOA integration and maintenance tools today support WCF.

o   Microsoft SOA technologies are based on WCF.

·         Maintenance and governance

o   Powerful configuration.

o   Built in tracing including ETW support.

o   Built in performance counters

o   WAS on IIS7.0 and Dublin (released in the near future) are hosts for WCF services with built in advanced governance capabilities.

·         Tools

o   Full Visual studio support

o   Tracing and configuration tools.

o   Many community and commercials tools

Hope this will help.