MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 02 of 15): Contracts (Level 200)  

Clients communicate with services by exchanging messages that are serialized on the wire, and de-serialized into common language runtime (CLR) types at each end. In the simplest scenario, client and service developers only work with objects, and all the serialization magic happens somewhere down below in the plumbing. Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) provides this plumbing. The Web Services Description Language (WSDL) describes the protocols required to reach the service, the clients use proxies to communicate with the service, and messages just happen. There are times, however, when developers must exercise more control over service contract design, message serialization, and the choice of protocols. For these scenarios, it helps to understand the options available. In this webcast, we provide practical guidance for designing service contracts, data contracts, and message contracts—showing you when and how to employ each. Join this session to learn simple code-first approaches to complex type serialization, to find out how to employ contract-first approaches with IXmlSerializable types, and to see where message contracts are best employed. We also describe how to support polymorphic behavior with known types.

Presenter: Michèle Leroux Bustamante, Chief Architect, IDesign Inc.

Michèle Leroux Bustamante is chief architect of IDesign Inc., Microsoft Regional Director for San Diego, Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for XML Web services, and BEA Technical Director. At IDesign, Michèle provides training, mentoring, and high-end architecture consulting services, focusing on Web services, scalable and secure architecture design for Microsoft .NET, interoperability, and globalization architecture. Michèle is also events director for the International Association of Software Architects (IASA). Visit www.thatindigogirl.com for more information on her book, Learning WCF (O'Reilly, 2007).


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