WCF - advantages and disadvantages

Question

I would like to find out about BOTH advantages and disadvantages of Windows Communication Foundation from people who have used it or just know it theoretically.

Answer 1

Primary advantage: Once you get over the learning curve, WCF makes it relatively easy to expose and consume software components. i.e. Given a component bakes functionality into a WCF Service Contract, a developer can expose that same component in-proc, across processes on a single box, across a Windows intranet, or throughout the internet all by just changing hosts and configuration information. Likewise it's easy for clients of said component to use it in any of those scenarios as well.

Primary disadvantage: the learning curve. WCF seems very daunting to many developers when they first begin looking into it. I made several false starts trying to get into Juval Lowy's "Programming WCF Services." Though I've found that comprehension came quickly once I began actually creating and consuming components.

The key thing to remember is that WCF let's you write some nice functional code and wrap it into a component that you can then relatively easily use just about anywhere with just about any amount of security, reliability and durability.

Compared to what we were forced to use previously, WCF is fantasitc!