Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Well done Juval!
Comment: This book was actually my first exposure to WCF. Many people describe it as a more advanced WCF book than the other more basic ones out there. Although I tend to agree that it is more advanced than other books, I disagree with the implicit suggestion that you shouldn't start with this book if your a beginner. I generally gain better command over a subject by going deep enough to understand what's going on, and what capabilities I have at my disposal.
"Programming WCF Services" does just that. It starts with the simple basics which is important for the novice. But as soon as you understand the basics, you yearn for much more deeper content, which follows in the chapters to come. Although I wish the book would have had a chapter devoted completely to Channels, the overall depth of the book is enough for most use cases that WCF developers will encounter.
Something i really like about Juval Lowy's writing specifically is that he walks you through the thought process of the underlying problem. He shows you the different options that are possible, and then gives his final opinion, thus leaving you satisfied as to why a particular methodology is better than another.
If Juval would consider a 2nd edition, I would recommend a chapter on custom Channel development, and RESTful web services.
All in all, a great book for beginning and intermediate WCF service developers.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Thorough Reference On WCF
Comment: WCF is one of the four major application programming interfaces introduced as part of .NET Framework 3.0. With its enormous power and flexibility, WCF has a very complex and multilayered architecture. After reading some nice overviews on WCF and even writing some simple code with out-of-box facilities provided by WCF, one may get a misleading impression of it being simple and straightforward. Once to delve into real world programming, you would be exposed to huge number of issues and complexities that in most cases may not be overcome without thorough understanding of the subject.
Juval Lowy's book does an outstanding job ob systematically and thoroughly uncovering practically all aspects of WCF programming. Not only it presents a simple to understand architectural picture of WCF in general and various architectural and functional subsystems, but also abandons with practical and thorough explanations of the details of virtually all aspects of WCF.
This book is not a beginner book. For starting with WCF I would recommend Michele Bustamante's book "Learning WCF". Lowy's book is a thorough reference on WCF that soon becomes your primary source of information.
I would like also to note that it does not seem to be the intent of the book to reflect on all internal plumbing of WCF, which realistically needs lot of experimentation. You may find Justin Smith's book as a good supplement to Lowy's book on custom channels and behaviors.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An exhaustive study
Comment: This is THE book to get if you want to master WCF. Author's remarkable ability to jam enormous information in terse paragraphs without making it boring is astonishing, to say the least. If you have read "Programming .net Components" by Juval, you'd know what I mean.
However, here is a warning to the clueless; this book demands a keen and experienced mind. It is not for the faint of heart. For the initiated, "Learning WCF: A Hands-on Guide" is probably a better choice.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great in-depth coverage of WCF
Comment: This is an excellent book that I would recommend getting after you already have a basic idea of what WCF is. Obviously you can start with this book, but it is drinking from the fire hose. Once you have a basic idea of what WCF is and how it works - get this book to really understand it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The essential text on WCF
Comment: This is reading material of the highest quality. Juval Lowy has the true master's ability to make potentially complicated material seem simple and obvious and easy to understand. He does this by combining deep knowledge of the subject matter with extremely clear writing. This is a book I read on the train in the morning, and refer to constantly while I am working on services during the day.
Throughout the book Mr. Lowy develops helper classes that plug some gaps in WCF and make the whole process of working with it easier. This is a plus, but if you don't want to use them, you don't have to.
Stable mate Michele Leroux Bustamante's book takes a more hands-on approach via the inclusion of labs, and quite frankly I think you need both.
WCF is both a deep and a wide technology, and you need a collection of top-quality resources in order to really 'get' it. "Programming WCF Services" is my favourite. Be sure to check out Appendix C, the WCF Coding Standard; he kept the best 'til last!
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