Programming Indigo The Code Name for the Unified Framework for Building Service-Oriented Applications on the Microsoft® Windows® Platform Paperback – Import, 20 July 2005

I really like the way this book builds on itself. Each chapter really does repeat a lot of the previous chapter during the programming exercises, but that hammers home the basics so that by chapter 6 you are really familiar with what you need to do to get a service up and running.If I had to make a criticism I would say the book has a bit of an identity crisis. It wants to be a step by step guide and a reference manual at the same time. A little clearer separation of discussion from reference might be helpful, but all in all a great how-to and why book.

This book a a great general introduction to codename "Indigo." It's been recently renamed to the "Windows Communication Foundation." You have to download the "WinFX Runtime Components" to get WCF. The runtime components will also install "Avalon", recently renamed to the "Windows Presentation Foundation." At the time of this writing, WCF can work with Visual Studio Beta 2 on Win XP or Win 2003, but will not install with community releases of Visual Studio.If you have been working with related technologies such as Web Services, Remoting, and attributed programming, the book will be a quick and easy read. WCF is very easy to use, and I didn't have any trouble getting the examples in the book to work. You will be amazed at how quickly you can lay the foundation for a complex distributed system.There are sections of the book that are composed of mostly reference tables with short explanations; I wish these had been put in an appendix.This book is a one-stop reference to getting started with WCF.

Looks like the Nov CTP bits don't work with some examples now!I see nothing on the MS site showing the changes??