If you are a beginner at WCF, go somewhere else. They do not really show you how to implement a lot of the technology discussed. It is very academic and school-like, in a sense that it tells you whats available, but doesn't explain how to use it in a real world business. It is also all over the place and not very focused. The chapters and topics don't seem to flow synchronously. Whole sections are just code samples, that do not work by the way, with no explanation of how to even use the code in a real world app. There are some serious holes in this book. I highly do not recommend. Stick with the Apress books.

The Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is the latest offering from Microsoft to address the need of passing messages from one software component to another. Using the .NET platform, Microsoft has built a single framework that can encapsulate any type of message passing (at least all the major one's of which I am aware). By abstracting the important pieces of the communication challenge (transport mechanism, security, reliability, etc.), Microsoft has made building components that communicate via SOAP, WS-*, REST, binary, and other methods of communication a much simpler problem than it once was. One cautionary note: WCF is a deep technology, so do not expect to understand all the concepts at once. Having a solid object oriented programming background will help you understand some of the underpinnings of WCF.

If you are a developer looking to get specific examples of how to use WCF in different situations, this book provides the most common situations in which you are likely to run into WCF (think Web Services) as well as an introduction into some more rare circumstances (like building custom Behaviors, Transports, and Channels). The sheer breadth that book attempts to cover means that it does not fully cover each item presented in the table of contents. I personally would have like to have seen more coverage on WS-*. That being said, for the consulting and product work that I do, this book got me 95% of the way to solving all the challenges that I have faced to date. For the other 5% WCF Unleashed is a great book for giving you the nomenclature and background you need to seek help elsewhere. There was also a chapter on WCF guidance that gives you some ideas for best practices that was quite refreshing as many books leave out these crucial tidbits. Interestingly, this book gives brief coverage of Windows Workflow and also CardSpace. Those chapters were not only an interesting aside, but quite useful when thinking about integrating WCF with these two new technologies from Microsoft.

There were a few small things that I want to mention. The authors provide all the code in the samples - even the code that is not necessarily relevant to the topic at hand. While I found this annoying at first, I did appreciate it later when the examples got a bit more complex. Also, the sample code was easy to miss. As of this review, the code download was from InformIT's site and not Sam's publishing site.

Overall, I would highly recommend Windows Communication Foundation Unleashed for anyone starting out with WCF who learns well from "How To" guides and sample code.

[...]

This book had been sitting on my bookshelf for sometime collecting dust. When I finally had a need to familiarize myself with WCF, I dug it out and ended up finding myself more confused than anything. The code samples do not work. There is no online update (The 45 day "Free" version on Safari is also incorrect). Four authors, with four different goals. The intro sections were written way too technical, and the higher chapters didn't give enough detail. The only chapter I liked was Chapter 21 - Guidance. A lot of good thought behind that chapter. Otherwise, I've learned more from Microsoft's MSDN site than this book.

Code sample provided does not work. The author doesn't seem to know the difference between a client and host! No source code is provided in a cd or by download.

I haven't finished the entire thing (about 200 pages to go), but so far it has covered up to the most obscure detail you might need to know. I must admit, however, WPF has an incredibly steep learning curve and some of its features are terribly counter-intuitve, but it is an amazing technology. The book shows you the power of the technology with great examples and explanations of the details you thought you knew.

I wouldn't waste your money on this book
First of all the publisher thinks it's a funny joke to send the reader to their website to register the book in order to get the source code. Registering allows you to buy the book and the source code is nowhere to be found.
I typed the code from the first example line-for-line and it failed. Rather difficult to build confidence with a new technology if the examples we, the reader, are supposed to follow don't work.
CDs are so inexpensive these days that it's inexcusable not to include the source code on a CD with the book.
I make it a point to type all of the examples, but if I run into a problem then it sure is nice to have the source code to test.

Between the WPF Unleashed book and this one I am thoroughly impressed by the quality of this series. This book is easy to read with in depth information, very relevant. It covers a lot of useful techniques: in particular security, customization and integration with WF. A real step ahead of the other books. A Must have for all serious WCF programmer.

I would definitely recommend this book for someone who is new to WCF and is looking to learn WCF in-depth.

Also if you want to learn Cardspace this is THE book I would say :)

I liked the way the Federated security was explained.

Craig has done a marvellous job!!!

This book is a must read for anyone wanting to learn WCF in-depth. The coverage of topics is comprehensive and the authors have a very lucid style that makes the material very easy to understand.

I purchased this book and realised that I already have it! This book is a slightly updated version of thie book 'Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation: Hands-on'

I did not like the first book as the style of writing is more about giving you a whole source code as page fillers instead of just highlighting the chunks of code that actually matter. Also would have been better to go step by step on the actual lines of code instead of giving summary of what the code does.

There are a few new chapters regarding WWF and WCF, but other chapters are just cut and paste from the previous book.

Personally I would look for another book.

To learn WCF, one would only need this book and the WCF SDK. Very comprehensive and neatly organized. To my surprise it also included chapter on Peer to Peer communication.

I must say that I'm impressed with this book. It goes through almost every topic important to WCF developers and does it in a way that's easy to understand.
The first thing that it does is give a high level overview. What is WCF and why should I use it? This is obviously very useful to someone who has never heard of it. From there they go into the basics of how to get a WCF application to work.
From my own perspective, having been working with WCF for more than a year I was much more interested in the advanced topics, and this book certainly doesn't disappoint here either. I was especially impressed with the topics on Security and Extensibility. Both of these topics are very large and potentially very complicated but they don't shy away from tackling them.
There are four chapters on Security, one that hits the basics, and the other three are more advanced. There's one chapter on using claims based security. They go into how to use it and why. They even go into Federated security, even providing an STS sample. There are two chapters on Identity and Cardspace which go into great detail about how to implement and use them.
The chapters on extensibility were great. It's separated into three separate chapters, one on the ServiceModel behaviors, one on channels, and one on Transport Channels. Extensibility in WCF is very good, but there's a lot to know. They hit most of the big ones, including what they can do for you, how to implement them and how to use them. They even go through and list the steps that WCF takes on the way from the client to the service and back and which extensibility points it hits along the way. I was very impressed with the section on creating a custom channels and especially the custom transport. This is a very difficult and daunting topic for a lot of developers but they manage to explain it in an easy to understand fashion even showing some very simple sample code demonstrating what the transport channel actually does.
They also have a chapter dedicated to best practices on designing and developing a WCF application. It's definitely a good checklist to go through when creating your application.

In Summary:
The good:
Very good high level explanations of WCF capabilities including why you should use them and how.
Lots of sample code, including downloadable labs.
Lots of good advice based upon experience.
Fantastic chapters on Security and Extensibility (there were others but those were my favorites).
Missing:
In the security chapters the only thing that I would have liked to have seen is more discussion about how to deal with some of the more common Kerberos problems we see, such as having to set the UPN/SPN identity element on the client. They go into this for certificates but not Kerberos.
Low level explanation of the inner workings of the ws-*. For example there were no xml wire representations of WS-RM messages creating a session. This is obviously not necessary to create WCF applications, but for the hardcore it's kind of nice.... Granted that this is probably a topic for another book entirely...
They didn't go over the MessageContract as much as I would have liked. There is some mention of it in the final chapter but it's brief.

In all, this was definitely a book I would recommend for WCF developers whether you're just starting out or are more advanced. It hits almost every topic that would interest a WCF developer and provides lots sample code for learning it and advice for developing your applications.