WCF puts all together

I was supposed to get involved into a SOA-project therefore I started to read about WCF. In the meanwhile it turned out that I might not be involved in that project, however I kept on doing my reading on this issue. I went through the following two books:

• Pro WCF Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation was a good introduction with a lot of code and examples. I liked it as a brief introduction into how WCF 'feels like'. But I switched to the other book soon after since I got more interested in the overall concepts than in the details.


• I liked Programming WCF Services because it talks in more details about advanced stuff like Instance Management, Faults, Transactions, Concurrency and Security.
  

Below is what I think about WCF: I think theres is nothing new but that all comes together in a nice consistent way. WCF helps much if an application is more than a monolithic web or rich-client application. I'd like to mention two personal highlights:

• Hosting: An WCF service can be hosted inprocess, as a windows-service, as a console-application or on the IIS.


• .NET Integration: Full integration with standard .NET mechanisms like the System.Security, System.Transaction, System.Threading-Namespaces.