Five webcasts are coming this month to talk about some of the new web service features in Orcas. Each webcast is aimed at developers and lasts 60-90 minutes. Beyond the Endpoints with Windows Communication Foundation with Juval Lowy (Level 100) Wednesday, June 18, 2008 10:00 A.M.-11:30 A.M. Pacific Time Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is more than just the next-generation platform for building connected systems. In many respects, WCF is the next development platform for Windows-based applications, providing system features that are presently crafted by hand on top of the Microsoft .NET Framework and the Windows operating system. In this webcast, we describe the power and productivity of WCF and demonstrate how it is a "better .NET Framework." We focus on the key system features of WCF so you can make educated decisions on aligning your product road map with WCF and assess the advantages of using WCF. We begin the webcast with a brief overview of WCF and the WCF architecture, and then we demonstrate data contract tolerance, instance management, transaction propagation, automatic synchronization, queued calls, and automatic security. geekSpeak: Workflow Services in .NET 3.5 with Jon Flanders (Level 200) Wednesday, June 18, 2008 12:00 P.M.-1:00 P.M. Pacific Time Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) are powerful technologies that were first introduced in the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0. In release 3.5 of the .NET Framework, these two technologies work even better together. In this installment of geekSpeak, Jon Flanders from Pluralsight introduces you to workflow services , and he describes how workflow services unites WCF and WF and provides great new features for building solutions. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Glen Gordon. Calling Services from Silverlight 2.0 with Jon Flanders (Level 300) Monday, June 23, 2008 9:00 A.M.-10:00 A.M. Pacific Time Microsoft Silverlight 2.0 browser plug-in provides an environment for building rich Internet applications (RIAs). Traditionally, these types of applications relied heavily on services such as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) for their functionality. In this webcast, we look at the facilities built into Silverlight 2.0 for calling services, and we discuss the options for implementing these services. Windows Communication Foundation and Windows Workflow Foundation Integration in Depth with Jesus Rodriguez (Level 400) Wednesday, June 25, 2008 10:00 Read More...