Pro WCF: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation

Understanding the Data Transfer Architecture

At the heart of the message capabilities of WCF is the Message class. The WCF architecture and runtime are essentially two pillars—the channel stack and the service framework—and the Message class is the bridge between the two. The first pillar (the channel stack) on the "send side" converts a Message instance with some specified action to the act of either sending or receiving data. On the other hand, with the channel stack operating on the receiving side, it is responsible for the reverse—converting an action into some specific message.

Although there is no restriction on using the Message class and channel stack directly, it is not usually recommended because it is fairly expensive (time-wise) ...