Windows Communication Foundation looms as an important step forward for Microsoft-style development. WCF can provide an infrastructure for Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA).
It is based on a Service Model focused on the job of communicating, and uses a class framework called the Channel Layer (comprising classes in the System.Service.Model.Channel namespace). Often running alongside SOA is WSDL, the Web Services Description Language uses XML to describe data. It is intended to provide a unified approach to the task of connecting diverse systems.
Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed provides a comprehensive overview of this new SOA framework for .NET.
Chapter 3, Data Representation, discusses XMLFormatter and XMLSerializer. A perusal of various developer forums discloses that these are among the topic many developers need to grapple with as they venture into Web Services.
The authors describe how data is sent from a Windows Communication Foundation client to a service, is serialized to XML within the client, and received from clients by Windows Communication Foundation, and so on. Two XML serializers that WCF can use to accomplish the serialization to XML and deserialization from XML are described. One is the XmlSerializer class that has been a part of the .NET Framework class library from the outset. The other is the XmlFormatter class that is new with the WCF. These are compared and contrasted. All hands on deck!
Read the excerpt in this PDF file.
Excerpted from Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed (ISBN: 978-0-470-13705-5) by Craig McMurtry, Marc Mercuri, Nigel Watling and Matt Winkler. Published as part of the Unleashed series.
Copyright © 2007. Published by Sams Publishing, and available at your favorite book seller. Reprinted with permission.
