Professional WCF 4: Windows Communication Foundation with .NET 4

I did read the reviews before I actually purchased this book. I am a seasoned, certified .NET developer. I have also written articles in various publications and have been an editor at times.With this background, I have the following observations.This is my first WCF book. This book is well organized and presents concepts at an appropriate level for me. The case studies are very practical, hands-on exercises which help reinforce concepts presented earlier in the book.However, at the really detailed level, the book is poorly written/edited. The sheer volume of awkwardly worded sentences, grammatical errors, and typos is amazing. In addition, there are enough errors/omissions in the hands-on exercises that you really need to be on your toes as a developer to make these exercises work.

This book is poorly written. I doubt it went through an editing process at all. The often incoherent ramblings were enough for me to drop the book half way through in favor of finding a different book. I don't know how WROX can put their name on this. Any book with "Professional" in the title should be held up to a certain standard. I believe there are technically accurate things in this book, but I personally can't get past the lack of editing.

If you are trying to learn WCF for the first time, stay away from this book. The quality of writing is horrible and eventhough the authors are informed, the language will simply distract you from learning the material. Wait a couple of more weeks and order the new edition of "Learning WCF". I am using "Essential WCF" and it is far better than this book, I do not have to read the same sentence more than once and wonder how an editor let this pass.

I have purchased many of Wrox's books over the course of many years and have always been very happy with their quality. Nevertheless, to my surprise, I found this book to be VERY poorly written and edited. In the first 50 pages alone I found a lot of mistakes in the grammar, and even simple to spot mistakes in code formatting and the source code itself. I have always been able to find mistakes in many of my technical books, but those always creep in even after a lot of editing. This book though shows very little signs of editing.With that said I can also say that this book's technical content is very sound and complete. The authors of the book are very knowledgeable and most topics are explained in depth (though sometimes disorganized and confusing).Wrox really needs to step up with their quality or this might be the last book I buy from them.

Good overview

If you are looking for a book to quickly get you up and running with WCF concepts then I wouldn't suggest this book. As with other Wrox book, the content tries hard to punch in a lot of details. At points, it feels like reading an online manual.The book never tries to present the examples in a structured manner so that you can read-learn-code and get to a running project. Instead it just points you to the downloadable code link.I do like the explanations related to the best practices. This seems to be a value add at the end of lengthy reading required in each chapters.

Very good book.I loved the fact that almost no previous knowledge of WCF is required.I read the book cover to cover and can honestly say that I gained a lot of knowledge.the "Use cases" where the book walks you through a real world scenario and shows the implementation are amazing.I started reading the book with very little knowledge of WCF and had been coding WCF ever since finishing the book.

Revising this from one star to three. The use cases in the final chapters are very informative. I wish that this style was used throughout the book to better illustrate many of the concepts.

A good book for those new to WCF with reasonable background in SOA principles, but the fundamental SOA based content is very Microsoft oriented and does not really represent the true state of the Enterprise world. Also lacks an easily found "Hello WCF" example to get started with.

While there is some good technical information in this book, it is a slog to read and feels like an 'early beta' before it's been edited and proofread. The first chapter throws lots of confusing terminology at you, much of which is jumbled and repeated, obviously written by someone for whom 'pattern' is the current buzzword. The second chapter is a little better, but sometimes uses different terms to the first, has mistakes, and seems to use many words when a couple would do. The book is padded out with lists of attributes etc which are easier to get from the on-line help. One of the chapters is written by someone who keeps using the word 'the' when it is not needed, but not when it is, meaning that you don't retain information as your brain is too busy trying to parse the English. Having read the first few chapters, which could easily have been compressed into a few pages, I've put the book down and I doubt if I'll bother to pick it up again. Have Wrox lost it?

Dieses Buch verliert sich in inhaltslosen Erzählungen, wird nie konkret. Das Wörtchen "some" kommt in - gefühlt - jedem dritten Satz vor (z. B. "[...] applies to some of the classes" - aha! Welche "some"s das sind, dafür hat's scheinbar nicht mehr gelangt).Die Kapitel sind vollkommen systemlos geschrieben, zusammenhanglose Abschnitte reihen sich kunterbunt und ohne erkennbaren Aufbau aneinander.Dazu kommt dieses ungeheuerlich schlechte Englisch der österreichischen, belgischen und italienischen Autoren, dass es mir, dem Leser, wirklich schwer macht, zu verstehen, was mir der Autor mit seinen Zeilen eigentlich sagen wollte. Hier ein repräsentativer Absatz aus Kapitel 4, der das ganze Drama dieses Buches beschreibt:"If you use a .NET application as a client, you generally don't program directly contrary to the service offered; you rely on the functionalities of a generated proxy. The proxy takes on such tasks as sending SOAP messages to the service, receiving the response, and making it available as an object. In addition to the service operations provided, the WCF proxy also features additional functions such as opening and closing, or other properties such as the endpoint or the inner channel to read out the session ID or endpoint-specific information."Mit obigem Abschnitt sind aus der Sicht der Autoren dieses Buches die Begriffe "Web-Service-Proxy", "Innerer Kanal", "Session-ID" bzw. "endpunktspezifische Informationen" bereits soweit vollständig erklärt und abgehandelt...Mein Rat: Finger weg von diesem Buch!Ich werde jetzt den "harten" Weg beschreiten und die aktuelle WCF 4-Spezifikation online in der MSDN durcharbeiten.