Getting started with WCF is not difficult at all, but like most new technologies it might not be obvious how one goes about experimenting with it for the first time. Some of the following may change after I write this, since I'm sure there will be many additions made that make using WCF as easy as possible. Here are what I believe to be the steps required to get up and running on your machine, assuming you have Visual Studio 2005 installed:
- Make sure you have Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Framework installed.
- Get and install the .NET Framework 3.0 Redistributable Package. Technically speaking, although the name ".NET 3.0 Framework" may sound as though it is an entirely different framework than 2.0, it is really just a set of technologies based on the 2.0 framework. There are no language changes in the 3.0 framework, so don't be worried about having conflicts when trying to develop with VStudio 2005--you can feel safe to install 3.0 because you will still also be running 2.0.
- Get and install the Microsoft Windows Software Development Kit for Windows Vista and .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components.
- Get and install the Visual Studio 2005 extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF and WPF), November 2006 CTP. Obviously, by the time you read this, the date on the CTP may have changed--and it may even be officially released. I'm actually not entirely sure if you need to install these extensions, but before I did install them I did not see the new 3.0 dlls in my "Add Reference..." window when trying to create a WCF project, and the extensions also add in intellisense for the configuration files you create for a WCF service (intellisense for configuration files is always a wonderful thing).