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

A major advantage is that WCF allows a single consistent access to windows communication technologies for developers thereby enabling easier development of SOA applications. Microsoft has abstracted a lot of the plumbing work so as to enable this.

A drawback would be that, WCF is Microsoft's implementation of SOA and hence its APIs are solely controlled by MS which makes interoperability a bit difficult. Also, to deploy WCF apps, you will need more underlying hardware resources on the platform on which the WCF applications will be running, since there is an additional layer of abstraction to deal with.