25.2. The Role of WCF

The wide array of distributed technologies makes it difficult to pick the right tool for the job. This is further complicated by the fact that several of these technologies overlap in the services they provide (most notably in the areas of transactions and security).

Even when a .NET developer has selected what appear to be the correct technologies for the task at hand, building, maintaining, and configuring such an application is complex, at best. Each API has its own programming model, its own unique set of configuration tools, and so forth.

Prior to .NET 3.0, this meant that it was difficult to plug and play distributed APIs without authoring a considerable amount of custom infrastructure. For example, if you build your ...

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