What's the point of a DataContract in WCF?

Question

VS.net creates a template when you create a WCF project.

It adds a class to the iService1.cs file:

// Use a data contract as illustrated in the sampl         


        

Answer 1

Perhaps not often used, we could use [DataContract] to pass through private variables. The DataContractSerializer will serialize/deserialize only publicly visible types if [DataContract] attribute is not used.

[DataContract]
public class SampleClass
{    
    [DataMember]
    private int MyPrivateProperty { get; set; }
}

(Note: If you are generating a proxy then private members are exposed as public)