WCF is Microsoft's recommended model for building services and Entity Framework is Microsoft's preferred ORM for accessing underlying data storages. Learning WCF and Entity Framework has become essential and critical for every software developer to survive in this SOA world.

WCF and Entity Framework are two powerful yet complex technologies, and there are huge reference tomes out there in the market for these two technologies. With this book, you won't get overwhelmed or scared away by tons of references; instead, you will be given a simple, easy-to-follow approach to get started. For the code solutions within this book, unlike many other WCF and EF books, where you have just one code snippet after another code snippet, all solutions in this book are fully working and completely finished. These solutions are independent of each other, yet built on top of each other, and get more and more sophisticated as the book progresses, so you can learn more advanced WCF and EF techniques easily and quickly.

This book is a step-by-step tutorial to guide you through learning WCF, Entity Framework, LINQ, and LINQ to Entities. You will be guided to create six WCF and Entity Framework solutions from scratch, of which three are multi-layered real-world WCF service solutions, so you will not only be reading, but also be coding through the book, to gain practical experience of WCF and Entity Framework.

Various test clients will be associated with each solution and all solutions can be built and run independently of other solutions. Clear instructions and relevant screenshots will make sure you won't get lost in the world of WCF and Entity Framework. Configuration files, host applications, test clients, and WCF services for each solution will also be available for download for you to examine, modify, and debug from the outside in.

The book focuses on the essentials of using WCF and Entity Framework, rather than providing a reference to every single possibility. It leaves the reference material online where it belongs, and concentrates instead on practical examples, code, and advice.

What will you learn from this book

• Create a WCF service without using the built-in WCF templates so you can understand what's going on under the hood. Host a WCF service in IIS Express, ASP.NET Development Server, managed applications, IIS, and Windows Service.
• Explore and learn different debugging options for a WCF service.
• Build a multi-layer real-world WCF service from scratch to understand every layer of a WCF service and apply it to your real work.
• Learn basic and advanced concepts and features of Entity Framework, LINQ, and LINQ to Entities.
• Apply LINQ to Entities to the data access layer of a WCF service with Self Tracking Entities.
• Control concurrent updates to the database with WCF and LINQ to Entities.
• Add distributed transaction support to a WCF service.
• Understand various security settings of WCF, and host a WCF service with Basic Authentication, SSL, and Windows Authentication.
• Explore extension points of WCF and extend a WCF service with custom behaviors.