Microsoft anticipates big benefits for those who upgrade to the planned Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) technology for Web services, a Microsoft technologist said at the TechEd 2006 conference on Monday.
While users certainly can stick with their current services, they would get benefits by moving over to WCF, said John Justice, a program manager at Microsoft who gave a presentation on WCF. "There's no reason to throw out your existing code," Justice said. By moving over to WCF, however, users can avail themselves of new features such as security, a flexible process model, manageability and the WS-* stack for advanced Web services, he said.
WCF features unified technology stacks and also is positioned to better enable interoperability and service orientation, which is a phrase that Microsoft technologists substitutes for the term SOA. The five stacks include: ASMX (ASP.Net Web Services), for interoperability; .Net Remoting, serving as a local object programming model; System.Messaging, for guaranteed delivery; Enterprise Services, for transacted communications and Web Services Enhancements, providing security on top of ASMX.
