In my last post on WCF, there is a point in the videos where you will get errors creating endpoints because they create identities expecting certificates.

I mentioned that at the end of the blog.  However, I decided this link and instructions were good and wanted to point it out.

How To: Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Message Security During Development

Edit:

(oh and make sure you run your VS cmd line as administrator or you will get this error :Save encoded certificate to store failed => 0×5 (5)     (Vista/Windows 7))

Edit again:

Note this comment as well:

Note: If FindPrivateKey is not on your machine, download the WCF samples, including the FindPrivateKey tool, at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=2611A6FF-FD2D-4F5B-A672-C002F1C09CCD&displaylang=en

Although note again… this link is no longer good (sigh)… so try here instead http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa717039.aspx  (lol good luck… and you wonder why Ryan… haha)

WCF (Windows Communication Framework) is a fantastic offering from Microsoft that relates to unifying several other communication APIs supported by the .NET Framework 2.0. ( read more of What is WCF? and then WCF on wikipedia to get an overview )

I’m not going to go into the details of WCF but rather recommend a few video’s that I have watched that help to walk through creating WCF services using Visual Studio 2008. 

Videos:
Creating Your First WCF Service

Configuring Services with Endpoints

Hosting WCF Services in IIS

Self-hosting WCF Services

Creating Your First WCF Client

Configuring WCF Service References

Articles:
Learn the ABCs of Programming WCF

Introduction to WCF

NOTE:

In video two, you might encounter error regarding certificates.  See this codeplex wiki article:

How To: Create and Install Temporary Certificates in WCF for Message Security During Development

This How To article walks you through to the process of creating and installing temporary certificates to be used during the development and testing of WCF services that implement message security. The article explains the process of creating, configuring, and installing these temporary certificates.

Well, just brought home a WCF book, ‘Pro WCF – Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation’. Not a bad read so far.

I’ll be hopping into the realm of SOA and ‘message-oriented’ development.

I’ll try to write up some of my experiences going forward.

I did manage to write a console app ‘ServiceHost’, along with a WCFService.

The nice part is how WCF utilizes interfaces for the service contracts. Something I didn’t see in straight up WebServices.

[ServiceContract()]
    public interface IService1
    {
        [OperationContract]
        string MyOperation1(string myValue);
        [OperationContract]
        string MyOperation2(DataContract1 dataContractValue);
    }

WCF seems to be a good thing, so wish me luck