Programming WCF Services: Mastering WCF and the Azure AppFabric Service Bus by Juval Lowy

This is a simul-post of a review on Amazon.com.

Excellent book, but not for beginners

I just want to write a very brief review to echo the views of many other reviewers of all editions of this book.

1. This is a comprehensive book on WCF for people who want to have a thorough understanding of WCF.
2. Beginners should avoid this book because it may make WCF so intimidating that, I am afraid, some may seek alternatives to WCF after a look at this book. Microsoft has done a great job in making WCF so easy to implement that some simple use of web services can be implemented literally in minutes both on the server side and the client side. This book is great for advanced users who want a deep understanding of WCF. One may never need such a book if he only has some light use of web services.

A great strength of WCF is that it allows the consumption of general SOAP based web service to be as easy as consuming WCF services. This is one of significant advantages making .Net stand out as a superior framework. Unfortunately, this book does not elaborate on this. Just one or two pages explaining SOAP, WS1.2, Addressing 1.0, etc. would be very beneficial to readers.