Programming Indigo the Code Name for the Unified Framework for Building Service-Oriented Applications on the Microsoft(r) Windows(r) Platform

Well written, and easy to read. Biggest problem with the book is that with the CTP releases, the source code in the book is out of date. Matt Davey http://mdavey.wordpress.com

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??

This book is based on the Beta1 release. There will be at least one more Beta release before the first actual product release. Note that the product may not be called Indigo at the actual release. As I am writing this review, the Beta1 release of Indigo is available on the Microsoft web site. Microsoft continues to expand their offerings based on their .NET technologies. Indigo is the code name for Microsoft's next generation Web Services technology. This concept is intended to provide a better way of enabling business applications to be distributed among multiple systems. This book describes the architecture and concepts embedded into Indigo as well as programming. It has sufficient information that fully operational and secure can be developed. The concluding chapters in the book talk about, and give code for, two distributed applications, one for an enterprise wide order processing system and another for a digital whiteboard so that all participants in a widely distributed can be looking at the same screen. Indigo stresses interoperability, but seems to use the word differently than the rest of us. I don't see anything about operating in other environments such as Linux. If, however, you are headed towards Indigo, here is the way to get started.