2. Windows Communication Foundation
António Cruz
Freelancer (SAPO/PT.COM)

3. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

4. What Is the Windows Communication Foundation?
Yesterday:
Remoting
COM
D/COM
WSE
MSMQ
ASMX
COM+
Many confusing and complicated options
The Windows Communication Foundation, which was code-named “Indigo,” is a technology by which pieces of software can communicate with one another. There are many other such technologies, including COM and DCOM, RMI, MSMQ, and WebSphere MQ. Each of those works will work well in a particular scenario, not so well in others, and is of no use at all in some cases. The Windows Communication Foundation is meant to work well in any circumstance in which software entities must be made to communicate with one another. In fact, it is meant to always be the very best option: It provides performance that is about as good as, if not better than, any other alternative; it offers at least as many features and probably several more; and it will certainly be the easiest solution to program.
WCF is a software factory template for software communication. It consists of a DSL, called the Service Model, and a class framework, called the Channel Layer. WCF is a complete infrastructure for service-oriented programming.
Now:
Windows Communication Foundation
One simple choice that is always the best option

5. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

6. How Does It Work? Data Service Model Metadata Channel Layer Messages
Address, Binding, Contract, and Behaviors
Metadata
Concretely, the Windows Communication Foundation consists of a number of class libraries within the .NET 3 Framework. The most important of those class libraries are the Service Model and the Channel Layer.
The Service Model provides you with a small, simple language for modeling how you want your software to communicate. In the language of the Service Model, a piece of software that responds to communications over a network is a service, a service has one or more endpoints, and each endpoint consists of an address (where), a binding (how), and a contract (what). The address defines where the service is located. The binding specifies the set of protocols that it uses to communicate. Contracts define the messages that services can send and receive.
At runtime, the Windows Communication looks at the binding that you have defined and assembles, from the Channel Layer, a stack of channels that implement the protocols specified by the binding that you chose. Then, when you have data to send, the Windows Communication Foundation translates your data into a message, and passes the message through the stack of channels it has assembled, so that your message is send on its way in accordance with the protocols identified by your binding. Messages that are received are decoded by the channel stack, and translated into the data that you are expecting.
Implementations of new protocols can readily be added to the channel layer. Thus, the Windows Communication Foundation protects your investment by allowing you to continue to use the same simple programming framework provided by the Service Model with any communication protocol you may encounter.
Addresses, bindings and contracts defined with the Service Model are all automatically described in metadata, which by default, is in the form of the standard Web Services Description Language. By virtue of the metadata, developers of client application can learn about the endpoints of a service, find out the address, binding and contract of each of those endpoints. They are able to generate client code for communicating with the service from that information provided by the metadata.
However, the Service Model language has an additional element that one can use in defining how a piece of software is to communicate that does not surface in the metadata: behaviors. Behaviors are used to control how messages are handled internally, such as whether new instances of your classes are constructed to handle each incoming data, or whether all of the incoming data is sent to the same instance of your classes. It is because such internal processing details don’t affect how a client and a server communicate with one another that behavior options are not included in the metadata for a service.
Channel Layer
Protocols, Encoders, and Transports
Messages

7. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

8. How Do I Use It? Service Contract Definition Contract Implementation
public interface IMyInterface {
[OperationContract]
public MyOutputType MyMethod(MyInputType myData); }
Service Contract
Definition
[ServiceBehavior(InstanceContextMode=Single]
public class MyService: IMyInterface {
public MyOutputType MyMethod(MyInputType myData) {
//my code … }
Contract
Implementation
(Service Type)
The development of a Windows Communication Foundation service begins with a developer defining a contract. That is done by writing an interface in a .NET programming language, and then adding attributes from the Service Model that designate the interface as a Windows Communication Foundation contract, and one or more of the methods as being included in the contract.
The next step is to implement the contract, which is done simply by writing a class that implements the interface. A class that implements an interface that is designated as a Windows Communication Foundation contract is called a “service type.” How the Windows Communication Foundation conveys data to and from the service type from the outside can be controlled by adding behaviors to the service type definition using the ServiceBehavior attribute. For example, the instance context mode attribute shown here controls whether all incoming data is sent to a new instance of the service type, or to a single instance, amongst other options.
Finally, an administrator configures endpoints for the service by associating an address and a binding with the contract and service type provided by the programmer. The configuration of endpoints is defined in a regular .NET configuration file, but a configuration editor is provided so that administrators don’t have to write configuration XML.
<service
name=“MyService”>
<endpoint
address=“MyAddress”
binding=“netTcpBinding”
contract=“IMyInterface” />
<service/>
Endpoint
Configuration

9. Self-Host within any .NET process:
How do I Deploy It?
Web Host within IIS:
For HTTP services on Windows XP® SP2 & WS2K3
For any service on Windows Vista® and Windows Server® “Longhorn”
Proven reliability, scalability, and security
Requires a .svc file to identify the Service Type
Self-Host within any .NET process:
Available for any service
Console apps, windowed apps, .NET NT Services …

10. Building a Simple Service and Client

11. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

12. You can choose a pre-defined binding:
All About Bindings
You can choose a pre-defined binding:
<endpoint
name=“MyService”
address=“MyAddress”
binding=“netTcpBinding”
contract=“IMyInterface”
/>
NetPeerTcpBinding
NetMsmqBinding
NetNamedPipeBinding
NetTcpBinding
WSHttpBinding
BasicHttpBinding
Binding
.NET Peer  Peer
.NET.NET via MSMQ
.NET.NET across processes
Secure, reliable duplexed
Basis for WS-* interop
Supports WS-Security, WS-RM, WS-Tx
Basic Profile 1.1 Interop and Integration w/ASMX
Purpose

13. You can customize a pre-defined binding
All About Bindings
You can customize a pre-defined binding
<services>
<service
name=“MyService”>
<endpoint
address=“MyAddress”
binding=“wsHttpBinding”
bindingConfiguration=“MyReliableBinding”
contract=“IMyInterface” />
<service/>
</services>
<bindings>
<wsHttpBinding>
<binding name=“MyReliableBinding”>
<reliableSession
enabled=“true”
ordered=“true”
</binding>
</wsHttpBinding>
</bindings>

14. You can define custom bindings
All About Bindings
You can define custom bindings
<?xml version=“1.0” encoding=“UTF-8” ?>
<configuration>
<system.serviceModel>
<services>
<service
name=“MyService”>
<endpoint
address=“MyAddress”
binding=“customBinding”
bindingConfiguration=“MyCustomBinding”
contract=“IMyInterface” />
</service>
</services>
<bindings>
<customBinding>
<binding name="MyCustomBinding">
<reliableSession advancedFlowControl="true” />
<security authenticationMode=“Kerberos” />
<binaryMessageEncoding />
<tcpTransport maxMessageSize=“ " />
</binding>
</customBinding>
</bindings>
</system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

15. Reliability

16. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

17. All About Addresses
The scheme portion of an address corresponds to the transport protocol:
NetNamedPipeBinding
NetMsmqBinding
NetTcpBinding
BasicHttpBinding, WSHttpBinding
Binding
net.pipe://…
net.msmq://…
net.tcp://…
Scheme
IPC – Interprocess communication
The schemes clearly indicate which protocols have been standardized.

18. An endpoint address is relative to a base address:
All About Addresses
An endpoint address is relative to a base address:
<services>
<host>
<baseAddresses>
<add baseAddress="
</baseAddresses>
</host>
<service
name=“MyService”>
<endpoint
address=“MyEndpointAddress”
binding=“wsHttpBinding”
bindingConfiguration=“MyReliableBinding”
contract=“IMyInterface” />
<service/>
</services>
For a Web-Hosted service, the base address is that of its virtual directory

19. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

20. All About Contracts Look again at this service contract:
public interface IMyInterface {
[OperationContract]
public MyOutputType MyMethod(MyInputType myData); }
How do MyOutputType and MyInputType get serialized into messages?
Serialization is done by DataContractSerializer by default
Handles “built-in” .NET Framework types automatically
User-defined types require Data Contracts:
[DataContract]
public class MyDataContract
{ [DataMember]
public string MyField; }
Can opt for the older, slower XmlSerializer:
[ServiceContract]
[XmlSerializerFormat]
public interface IMyInterface

21. WCF in a Nutshell Externally visible, per-endpoint Opaque,
per-service,
endpoint
or operation
Address
Binding
Contract
Behavior
HTTP Transport
WS-Security Protocol
Request/ Response
Instancing Behavior
Concurrency Behavior
Peer
Transport
net.p2p://...
Throttling
Behavior
TCP
Transport
WS-RM Protocol
net.tcp://...
Metadata Behavior
NamedPipe Transport
WS-Coord Protocol
net.pipe://...
One-Way
Error Behavior
Transaction Behavior
MSMQ Transport
Duplex Channel
net.msmq://...
Custom Behavior
Security Behavior
Duplex
Custom Transport
Custom Protocol
xxx://...

22. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

23. WCF Transaction Managers
Lightweight Transaction Manager (LTM)
Single AppDomain, single durable resource, multiple volatile, one service, maximum performance.
Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC)
Transactions across process and network, uses OleTx or WS-AT, multiple services, flows client and services transactions, system service.
Kernel Transaction Manager (KTM)
Vista/Longhorn only, transactional file system (TxF) & registry (TxR), uses LTM (multiple volatile resources, one service).

24. Transactions

25. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

26. All About Security Authentication Authorization
A message may incorporate a security token
The security token has claims about the sender
The type of security token is configured with the binding
Built-in support for these token types:
Windows (Kerberos or NTLM)
Username (a user name & a password)
X.509 certificate
CardSpace tokens
SAML tokens
Can add support for custom token types
Authorization
Authorization configured w/ServiceAuthorizationBehavior
Authorization options:
For users authenticated using Windows tokens:
Principal Permissions
ASP.NET Role Provider
For users authenticated using any sort of token:
a ServiceAuthorization manager

27. Message-Level Security

28. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

29. All About Management Integrated Management Management Model Tools
Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Management Pack
Integrated Management
Management Model
Microsoft Management Model Designer
Tools
CIM Studio
ScriptOMatic
PowerShell
Configuration Editor
Trace Viewer
PerfMon
PowerShell
CmdLet
Instruments
(Data & Control Points)
Configuration System
WMI Provider
Tracing
and
Logging
Performance
Counters
Management
Interface

30. Agenda What Is the Windows Communication Foundation? How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

31. All About Integration Client Service Integration Strategy ASMX WCF WCF
Configure WCF components to use BasicHttpBinding
Remoting
WCF
WSE 2
WCF
Remoting
WSE 2
Upgrade Remoting & WSE 2 components to WCF
WCF
WSE 3
WSE 3
WCF
For HTTP, use properly configured WSHttpBinding
For TCP, custom TCP transport sample on NETFX3.com
WCF
COM+
Use COMSVCConfig.exe to wrap COM+ app w/WCF endpoint
COM
WCF
Service Monikers

32. All About Extensibility
Contract
Contract
WSDL Exporter
Client Code
parameters
Service Type
parameters
Operation Invoker
Parameter Inspector
Parameter Inspector
Message Formatter
Message Formatter
Message Inspector
Instance Provider
Typed Proxy
Message Inspector
Dispatcher
Operation Selector
Channel
Custom Channel
Custom Channel
Channel
Channel
Custom Channel
Custom Channel
Channel
Transport
Channel
byte[]
Transport
Channel
byte[]
Encoder
Encoder
Custom Transport
Custom Encoder
Custom Encoder
Custom Transport
* Added by configuring the runtime with behaviors
* Added by adding binding elements to the binding

33. REST and POX extensibility

34. Summary What Is the Windows Communication Foundation?
How Does It Work?
How Do I Use and Deploy It?
Bindings
Addresses
Contracts
Transactions
Security
Management
Integration and Extensibility

35. Links http://wcf.netfx3.com/ http://blogs.msdn.com/drnick/
António Cruz
Freelancer (SAPO/PT.COM)