Do you use WCF or WF?

[mendhak]

A lot (all) the threads here are about WPF. I don't use it that much but I use WCF and WF a lot. Do you? Why or why not? If not, are you planning to do so?

[DeanMc]

No to either, but only because I haven't had a chance to read up on what they do. I have a few references with chapters devoted to them so I really must get to them soon? I certainly would not complain if a certain 3 eyed member was to place a quick summary of their goals (the technologies that is) in this thread! :Thumb:

[mendhak]

Sure...

WCF
You've probably used SOAP/REST web services at some point. They are based entirely on specific rules and work over HTTP. WCF aims to separate the code from the communication. This means that you can write one codebase with your methods but host it over HTTP, TCP, UDP, SmokeSignals, etc. It also means that it no longer needs to sit in IIS, but can sit in a windows service, a windows form application, WPF app or a console application... essentially anything can host its own WCF service. And further, you can host TCP services (binary) using IIS7, which is very useful for intranet applications in terms of speed. You're also not restricted to SOAP 1.1, but can move on to SOAP 1.2 using the various types of bindings - webHttp, wsHttp, netTcp, etc.

WF
It's a different way of programming. In enterprise apps, logic flow is everything. And logic is complicated. Workflow gets you to do two things

a) Diagrammatically represent the workflow of a large application (you know, flowchart diagrams). Look at this:



Each of those blocks is a manageable chunk of code.

b) Code separation into reusable components. It forces you to separate your methods into generic bits that can be reused anywhere, in other workflows. It also lets you show it to business owners as they get a good idea of what the workflow is like and future changes become easy because all the components can be moved around when logic changes, simply because you were forced to write code in manageable chunks. And yes, you can debug even in the diagrammatic view.

Did I make sense?

[chris128]

I dont currently use either (have to say I wasnt even aware of WFs existence) but I am planning to take a look into WCF very soon as I need to make a winforms app interact with a service (which i'm developing) and so I think using WCF may be the best method of communicating between the two. I need to do a bit more reading up on it first though and see what advantages/disadvantages it has over the alternatives

[DeanMc]

Yeah, WF has peaked my interest. I must read up about it when I go home!

[techgnome]

Don't currently use either one.... but at my last job, the last project I worked on was a WF/WCF integration project.... WF is just freaking sweet! Flowchart programming.... and we even got to develop it as a State Machine... it rocks!

-tg

[jmcilhinney]

We've started using WCF at work but I haven't worked with it myself yet. We don't intend to use WPF at work any time too soon but it's something I intend to investigate for myself very soon. WF is something I haven't given too much thought to for myself but I think it's worth investigating for work.

Can we add "Not yet but soon" options to the poll?

[Negative0]

I have used some of the workflow bits within some sharepoint programming that I have done.

[Lightning]

I use WCF for several web services (both requesting a web service and hosting a web service) and I personally like this technique very much. But I never used WF

[vbNeo]

It might be because WF's are rather straight forward and easy to go at(as long as you're doing something simple ), you can get a long way with a good book - whereas WPF sometimes requires strange hacks and to many going from winforms to xaml is a pretty big step.

EDIT: Why on earth am I writing about WPF when the topic is about WCF? Gotta cut back on the magic shrooms it would seem.

[chris128]

Can we re-cast our vote :P I use WCF a lot now and am looking into WF for my next project

[mendhak]

Done, and we're all now evenly matched. Too bad I didn't make the results public.

[chris128]

Why thank you and yes you are a fool