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.

This 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 dictate one architecture.

Clemens Vasters is Community Program Manager on the Windows Communication Foundation Team at Microsoft. He was co-founder and formerly CTO of newtelligence AG. Vasters has considerable experience developing commercial software systems, using COM, Microsoft BizTalk, SOAP and Microsoft .NET.