Error: Cannot import wsdl:portType

I recently published a post on fixing an error you might get using the WCF SVCUTIL.exe utility when creating WCF service contracts from WSDL documents here: http://smart421.wordpress.com/2011/03/24/error-cannot-import-wsdlporttype/

WCF Tutorials and Resources

Recently I have been getting to grips with the specific details of WCF - Windows Communication Foundation (.NET 3.0) as it is a very powerful alternative to distributed computing. Although WCF has been released for sometime, only now with the advent of Visual Studio .NET 2008 can the real power begin and make integration and WCF service development easy.

WCF is a massive subject and you will find some books over-complicate or delve in too deep to begin with which makes learning difficult.

A book I am fond of is Pro WCF by Apress which I blogged out a while ago here.

Of course there are lots of WCF samples, whitepapers on Microsoft's WinFx site here.

You will find with Microsoft's site above, most of the code samples are pre VS 2008 so target VS 2005 with the WCF orcas add-in.

I have recently found a set of 15 web casts from Michele Bustamante a Chief Architect of IDesign and a Microsoft Regional Director and a Microsoft Connected Systems MVP.

You can get these web casts from here:

Part 1 SOA Concepts and an introduction to WCF
Part 2 Contracts
Part 3 Contract Versioning
Part 4 Exceptions & Faults
Part 5 Bindings
Part 6 Hosting
Part 7 Messaging Patterns
Part 8 Instancing Modes
Part 9 Concurrency, Throughput and Throttling
Part 10 Security Fundamentals
Part 11 Federated Security
Part 12 Reliable Messaging
Part 13 Transactions
Part 14 Message Queuing
Part 15 Extensibility

You can get the source code for these web casts here.

See here for an example of consuming a WCF service via a Windows Mobile device.

The WCF subset supported by CF

UPDATE: MSDN link that documents the supported features: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397842.aspx

Andrew Arnott details the elements of the WCF that is supported on the .NET Compact Framework: http://blogs.msdn.com/andrewarnottms/archive/2007/08/21/the-wcf-subset-supported-by-netcf.aspx

Books I am currently reading - Oct 07

I want to start a regular blog regarding the books that I read and to give feedback as to what I think of the book and whether I recommend it to others.

As most of you are probably aware now that .NET 3.0 has been released - formally known as WinFX in the early pre-beta days last year. But my guess is probably most shops are not using .NET 3.0 yet. Would like to hear feedback from anyone on this, experiences etc.

Part of .NET 3.0 is WCF - Windows Communication Foundation - formally known as Indigo.

Indigo is a new set of API's that build ontop of other messaging technologies, such as Enterprise Services (COM+), Web Services, MSMQ, Windows Services (NT Services), .NET Remoting. But WCF is much easier than all these and massively flexible.

The WCF book I bought is named Pro WCF by Apress: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pro-WCF-Practical-Microsoft-Implementation/dp/1590597028/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/203-2981324-6436760?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191704317&sr=8-1

I highly recommend this book. It starts by going back to fundamentals and talks about SOA's. If you're not sure what an SOA is, then this book should clear things up for you.

The book is highly technical and covers WCF to a fairly good degree. You will certainly learn enough in order to be productive in WCF once you have read this book.

The WCF fundamentals are covered throughout the book with constant examples which are the ABC's of WCF - Address, Binding and Contract.

The book covers most types of bindings - ones which come with WCF which to be honest is probebly more than enough. I like the easy reading layout, the author's writing style encourages you to read more and more rather than to put the book down.

I have also in my possession the WPF version of this book which I will blog a brief review of once I have read it. Watch this space!! ;)