MSDN Magazine - January 2009 - (Page 50)

F i r s t Lo o k WCF And WF Services In The .NET Framework 4.0 And “Dublin” Aaron skonnard At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) in October 2008, Microsoft released the details around numerous improvements that will ship in the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, specifically in the areas of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Microsoft also debuted some extensions to Windows Server—code-named “Dublin”—that provide an improved hosting and management experience for WCF and WF applications. The integration of WF and WCF in the .NET Framework 4.0 will make it simpler to develop distributed service-oriented apps. You will be able to build stateful workflow services using a completely declarative model that offers more flexibility and business agility. The new hosting and management extensions introduced by this article is based on a prerelease version of the .NEt Framework 4.0 and “Dublin.” All information is subject to change. “Dublin” complement these framework advances. The combination of advances in the framework itself and in the operational tools that support the framework means that the application server capability in Windows Server will make a significant leap forward. In this article, I will explore some of the key new WCF and WF features in the .NET Framework 4.0 as well as the new application server capabilities provided by the “Dublin” extensions. Moving toward the .NET Framework 4.0 this article discusses: • WF activity library and designer • WCF improvements in the .NEt Framework 4.0 • A guide to the “Dublin” extensions • Building and deploying services with “Dublin” technologies discussed: .NEt Framework 4.0, “Dublin” 50 msdn magazine WCF and WF are complementary technologies. If you are unfamiliar with them, a simple way to think about the pair is: WCF on the outside, WF on the inside. WCF is used to expose the external service interface of an application, and WF is used to describe the internal flow, states, and transitions of an application. The .NET Framework 3.5 introduced some compelling integration between the two, specifically in the form of the WF Send and Receive activities. With these activities, you can employ WF to simplify the process of coordinating multiple service interactions to fulfill complex, long-running workflows. You can also use these activities to extend the reach of your WF workflows by enabling them with WCF endpoints (see Figure 1). This essentially allows you to employ WF as the implementation for your WCF services, what I will call WCF workflow services throughout this article. Although it’s possible to implement WCF workflow services in the .NET Framework 3.5, it isn’t easy. For starters, the integration layer

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of MSDN Magazine - January 2009

Toolbox CLR Inside Out Basic Instincts Cutting Edge Test Run First Look� Geneva Framework Silverlight Windows Mobile Service Station Security Briefs Extreme ASP.NET Foundations .NET Matters { End Bracket }

MSDN Magazine - January 2009

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