Summary

In conclusion, for any data to be passed to or from a service, first it needs to be serialized. Although both .NET and ASP.NET in general support serialization, WCF truly extends this concept and makes it easy to implement. Of the various options you examined, data contracts are the default and one of the most flexible serialization engines designed with change and versioning in mind. The WCF runtime flexibility allows you to switch to legacy support when required.

The ability to map your business components to data members in a natural OOP paradigm is a powerful feature. This makes the development, testing, and maintenance of data contracts along with versioning intuitive and easier. You also examined the powerful ability to filter the messages based on one or more criteria, allowing you to support scenarios, which earlier would require a lot of effort.

Today's needs demand application components that are available across the organization. The need for collaboration, online or offline, is the mandate for all companies. The next chapter will cover the aspects of developing peer-to-peer computing with WCF.