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Podcast: Clemens Vasters on Windows Communication Foundation
By Jack Vaughan
Just before TechEd this summer, Clemens Vasters walked TheServerSide.NET through a brief overview of aspects of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). Vasters strongly states the case that WCF is not a pattern for architecture, but is architecture-agnostic. Vasters is Community Program Manager on the Windows Communication Foundation Team at Microsoft.
Click to access Clemens Interview: WCF Podcast Briefing - Left click to spawn media viewer/Right click to download.
On architecture. That WCF does not dictate architecture may not be readily apparent, but it is as it should be. In each case that a new technology is created, it may be said that there is an explicit or implicit directive as to how to work with it to succeed. Too often that directive is to throw out all work you've done previously. In WCF, Microsoft's own architects looked to build a framework that could effectively encompass earlier means of distributed computing. But they took a strong lesson from experience with earlier technologies, in that they chose not to prescribe architecture. Listen to the podcast to learn more.
On integration. Vasters notes that the lion's share of development work has to do with integration – that the industry as a whole has not made it easy to integrate apps. That is changing. SOAP was a first step. WCF, a second. ''We are getting to terms across the industry to unify things on the Web services stack. I think we are getting to the point where we get even complicated scenarios working. That was the goal behind the Windows Communication Foundation, '' he said.
On SOA. 'Say it isn't SOA, ' may be a way to sum up Vasters thinking on this topic. WCF is not a way to embed SOA best practices. SOA is not services, from Vasters point of view. Decoupling client-side and server-side concerns is what services is about, yes. But ''SOA is a more lofty term used throughout the industry to describe everything and nothing, '' he maintains. ''If you can poke into it, they don't talk about software architecture, '' he said. But, in fact, SOA is about the alignment of business processes and IT, according to Vasters. He avows: ''The notion of SOA has done noting new for software architecture. ''
Podcast link
Click to access Clemens Interview: WCF Podcast Briefing - Left click to spawn media viewer/Right click to download.
Related links
Clemens Vasters blog – MSDN blog
Windows Communication Foundation - Microsoft
Windows Workflow Foundation - Microsoft
Windows Presentation Foundation -Microsoft
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Message #216528
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What a load of BS
Frankly, SOAP is not easier. It's an ugly hack and the specification is dizzying mind numbing. From first hand experience reading the specification and using soap toolkits in .NET, C++, and Java, SOAP is too bloated to be useful for simple stuff and too immature for hard stuff. Anyone that thinks SOAP makes integration easier clearly hasn't actually worked in a variety of integration scenarios from simple to complex distributed transactions across the internet.
peter
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Message #216588
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Re: What a load of BS
Peter, could you elaborate on why in your opinion SOAP is bloated ? Because the main caveat I found with the integration of SOAP across platforms is the fact that all toolkits do not implement the same WS-* specs (WSE 2.0 implements a certain version of WS-addressing, shared with earlier versions of Axis and JWSDP, and WSE 3.0 implements another version, shared with newer versions of Java toolkits). But that's not my definition of "bloated" ; that would border on "immaturity", though SOAP is not itself immature, the toolkits are immature.
François
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Message #216854
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Soap is easier
Hi Peter ,
I question your experience with .NET and SOAP based systems . I have delivered a large SOAP based application over the last 2 years ( and my organisation a number more ) and it is MUCH better ( especially allowing different versions of clients , intersystem compatibility etc). Im comparing it to the distributed applications i wrote and was involved in the previous 10 years ( COm+ ,RMI and remoting) .
I conceed most of remote object systems were getting better after 2000 especially implementing interface fasacdes , using Xml and using more chunky calls. But if you are using chunkier calls the overhead of SOAP is very low.
With the right tools the developer should not need to know the plumbing. Microsoft have doen a very good job of this in the .NET platform but sadly in Java and C++ the tools are not as good ( i still can believe the Axis based solutions such as JBoss dont do type promotion ).
As a final note WCF allows communications without SOAP if you desire , which is not a bad choice for intersystem communication where no routing of messages is required.
Regards,
Ben
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Message #216855
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What is WCF's advantage?
Frankly, SOAP is not easier>>
Somewhat agree with this statement especially if you have ever created your own RPC over HTTP using a saxparser directly or followed XML-RPC in its humble beginings, which is very light weight and simple compared to SOAP.
Traditionally, as a developer we've always tried to get data across the wire and have been meticulous at keeping the communication layer seperate from the business layer, however, one is still required to add a lot of attributed code markup to your business interfaces, along with a verbose definition of how to access the business functionality over the wire having to specify a lot configuration details. This ties up the comm-layer (albeit agree that WCF allows being architecture agnostic)
Alternately, why not have any object type ( without it having any knowledge of how it will be accessed i.e. whether in-proc, out-proc, over IPC, http, smtp etc.) be able to register externally to the application with a definition of the communcation layer and managed directly by the runtime through dynamic proxies/code generation?
As well as provide hooks to create custom communication layers with a combination of other supporting comm layers (MSMQ, Notifcation etc.) which can be specified external to the application code allowing for injecting different architectural patterns?
Having built many systems, with COM, DCOM, COM+, DNA, .NET and Java WebServices the problem still remains with coupling of comm layer code with the business layer based on a particular technology and platform making inefficient decoupling of the distributed system.
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