WCF News and Announcements

Picture Services shows off WCF Web Programming

justinjsmith — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 16:43:00 GMT

WCF in the .NET Framework 3.5 includes simplified support for building services that adhere to the protocols of the web. To highlight these capabilities, we published Picture Services. Picture Services (http://www.cloudsamples.net/pictureservices/) is a relatively simple sample that exposes pictures using the REST API in WCF. It represents a set of pictures as an ATOM or RSS feed, and provides access to single pictures using simple HTTP GETs. Pictures can come from a variety of sources including Windows Desktop Search, a folder on your computer, or Flickr. Check it out and enjoy...

Orcas Beta 2 available for download...

justinjsmith — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:53:00 GMT

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" and the .NET Framework Beta 2 are now available for download. Included in this release of the .NET Framework is enhanced WCF support for web programming (REST), syndication, JSON messaging, and intergration with workflow foundation.

.NET Framework 3.5 Beta 1 Available for Download

justinjsmith — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 14:55:00 GMT

Visual Studio Code Name "Orcas" and the .NET Framework Beta 1 are now available for download. Included in this release of the .NET Framework is enhanced WCF support for web programming, syndication, JSON message encoding, and intergration with workflows.

Just Released: Web Service Software Factory for WCF

clemensv — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 22:58:00 GMT

The guys over at patterns & practices have just released the second version of the Web Service Software Factory. This new release has everything the first one had with the addition of loads of new stuff specifically for building WCF Web services using VS 2005. Some of the many new features help you apply message-level security, construct services from WSDL/XSD, perform design-time code/config analysis, apply message validation, and migrate from ASMX services. If you're building WCF Web services, you definitely want to check this out. http://msdn.com/servicefactory

Build numbers for the WCF RTM Version

clemensv — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:53:00 GMT

The WCF bits in the September CTP of the .NET Framework 3.0 were very, very close to the final bits that we ended up releasing and had the version number 3.0.4506.03

Between the September CTP and the RTM version, we only took a very small number of fixes into the product and did not increment the major build number (4506), but only the minor build numbers.

There is also a small discrepency between the minor build numbers for Vista and for the supported downlevel platforms (Windows XP and Windows Server 2003), because we took a number of downlevel-only setup fixes into the standalone .NET Framework 3.0 installer code that were not required for Vista. The product code in these two builds is identical.

The RTM WCF build numbers are:

Windows Vista (integrated .NET Framework 3.0): 3.0.4506.25
Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 (standalone .NET Framework 3.0): 3.0.4506.30

We're done. WCF is live.

clemensv — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 08:41:00 GMT

The Windows Communication Foundation is now available in its release version as part of the .NET Framework 3.0. It's been a long 7 years since Microsoft first endorsed the SOAP specification and the industry has since come together on specifying a broad set of interoperability standards for rich and robust communication between applications. The Windows Communication Foundation is Microsoft's realization of the WS-* vision and is a the unified foundation to build service oriented applications. Whether your applications communicate via one-way, request-response, or duplex connections, whether they use TCP, HTTP, Named Pipes, Peer-Meshes, or Queues, whether they use transport-based or message-based security, whether they use simple authorization or federated brokered trust ... there is just one way to program. With the release of the Windows Communication Foundation we are consolidating five technologies, ASP.NET Web Services, Web Service Enhanements, .NET Remoting, Enterprise Services, and System.Messaging, into this new integrated architecture, programming model, and runtime environment and provide a more productive development platform for distributed systems than ever before. Everyone around here at the Connected Systems Division at Microsoft is very proud of having achieved this goal and we'd like to thank the thousands of customers and friends who have been testing our pre-release versions, reporting bugs, and giving us suggestions for how to improve the product. We would also like to thank the many industry partners who we cooperated with to define the broad family of interoperability standards and who have and still are working with us to make interoperability in the enterprise and on the web a reality. These are great days. Thank you all.

Setup failing?

clemensv — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 05:19:00 GMT

If your .NET Framework 3.0 install fails on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003 (it's preinstalled on Windows Vista), the #1 reason for such failures are incomplete uninstalls of previous pre-release versions. Therefore, please use the uninstall utility provided on the Microsoft download center to clean up a previous .NET Framework 3.0 or WinFX install before installing a new version.

Need WCF Training?

clemensv — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 19:11:00 GMT

We have posted a list of U.S. and international WCF training providers here. These companies have been deeply involved with the Windows Communication Foundation team for years in software design reviews and early adopter programs in order to develop and deliver high-quality training.

.NET Framework 3.0 September CTP

clemensv — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 21:22:00 GMT

The .NET Framework 3.0 September CTP has just been released. Download it here for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The same version is included in the September CTP of Windows Vista (you cannot install the separate download package on Windows Vista).

The version of WCF included in this CTP drop of the .NET Framework 3.0 is scheduled to be the last prerelease version published before the product release. If you find any issues with this version, please send us feedback using the bug report form on the Connect site.

Double the size, double the fun. WCF Documentation CTP (September 15)

clemensv — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 05:05:00 GMT

The size of our lastest Documentation CTP doubled to a 40MB archive with this latest release (aligned with the NETFX 3.0 version in Vista RC1), which contains even more complete docs and all the SDK samples embedded into the documentation for download.

When .svc no longer works in RC1 ...

clemensv — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 16:10:00 GMT

When upgrading from any WCF Beta build to WCF RC1 on Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, some users may find that IIS-hosted services (.svc metadata files) will not function correctly. This is not related to a defect in WCF RC1, but rather to IIS metabase corruptions caused by the previously installed WCF Beta version.
The CleanIISScriptMaps utility published here helps in restoring the IIS metabase to a defined state.

Run this utility after you have uninstalled the Beta version and before you install WCF RC1. If you have already installed WCF RC1, you will have to re-register the scriptmaps with the ServiceModelReg utility that is part of the .NET Framework 3.0 and can be found in the "%SystemRoot%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.0\Windows Communication Foundation" directory.

Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Help CTP August 15, 2006

swilkins — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:24:00 GMT

We have added lots of new topics to the WCF help! You can download the documentation from http://wcf.netfx3.com/files/folders/product_team/entry5176.aspx.

June CTP Breaking Changes List

ShyCohen — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 19:27:00 GMT

WinFX June CTP introduces a small number of breaking changes from the Vista Beta 2 release. On the Resources page on this site you can find the detailed class-by-class, method-by-method breaking changes report.

New Whitepaper: WCF Interoperability and Migration with WSE 2.0

clemensv — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 17:11:00 GMT

Destined to be the next version of every Microsoft distributed technology out there today as well as the foundation for creating service-oriented applications on the Windows platform, one of the immediate concerns about WCF are its integration, migration and interoperability with some of the existing Microsoft Web Services technologies.This new article (draft) by William Tay focuses on some of the migration and interoperability scenarios with Web Services Enhancements (WSE) and WCF, specifically with WSE 2.0.

New Whitepaper: ASP.NET Web Services and the Windows Communication Foundation

clemensv — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 16:19:00 GMT

This new whitepaper written by Craig McMurtry compares ASP.NET Web services to the Windows Communication Foundation and explains what to do about existing and planned ASP.NET Web services now that the Windows Communication Foundation is soon to be released.