What is WCF, WPF?

vbboyd · April 26th, 2012, 11:50 AM

Can anybody here explain what WCF and WPF are? I was also wondering were these particular technologies covered in this book? I don't remember seeing them for sure. I am not sure about them as to whether these technologies were covered in the book or not. Also does anybody know how these particular .NET technologies have evolved and have changed in the current version of .NET 4.0?

Imar · April 27th, 2012, 02:29 AM

Nope, the book doesn't cover these topics. The new version - Beginning ASP.NET 4.5 - will cover WCF. I use WCF instead of the (now outdated) ASMX web services technology I used in the 3.5 and 4.0 versions of the book,

Cheers,

Imar

Noob_Ninja · April 28th, 2012, 03:27 PM

To the best of my knowledge:

WCF is Windows Communication Foundation. From Widipedia:
"WCF is meant for designing and deploying distributed applications under service-oriented architecture (SOA) implementation."

WCF might be used if your application needs to provide or consume data from some other completely separate application (typically over the internet). For example, if your accounting application needed to exchange data with your inventory application; or if your weather widget consumes data published by NOAA.

WPF is Windows Presentation Foundation. From Wikipedia:
"a computer-software graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Windows-based applications."

WPF is the set of tools to build Windows PC application graphical user interfaces. WPF is what ASP.NET Web Forms tries to emulate: Web Forms was designed for WPF programmers who needed to use their skill set of building PC applications to building web applicatons. Silverlight is a subset of WPF for building web application GUIs (but it requires a special plug-in just like Flash does)

Imar · April 29th, 2012, 06:36 AM

Good info, but:

Quote:

WPF is what ASP.NET Web Forms tries to emulate: Web Forms was designed for WPF programmers who needed to use their skill set of building PC applications to building web applicatons.

This is not true; ASP.NET Web Forms was created many years before WPF. ASP.NET is modeled after the old VB 6 forms and Win Forms (that shipped along with ASP.NET in the first version of Visual Studio .NET).

Cheers,

Imar

vbboyd · April 30th, 2012, 10:29 AM

Yes, I have been brushing up on WCF and to me it is just like the old version of DCOM using MTS to host a .dll service. It reminds me a lot of that particular technology. Back then you could debug your DECOM application by looking at the MTS window and watching the little billiard balls like Icons spin as each class was being hit and the methodologies of the .dll were being accessed. But then again, that was probably back before Imaar's time, so I am dating myself here I know. But yeah almost an identical concept that is at work here just with a new kind of technology interface twist.

Imar · April 30th, 2012, 02:06 PM

Quote:

But then again, that was probably back before Imaar's time, so I am dating myself here I know.

I guess I look younger than I am. I have seen my fair share of spinning balls in boxes using COM and MTS ;-)

Imar

August 28th, 2014, 12:12 PM

Great, I was asking the same question about WCF and WPF