My customer has paid for some type of Microsoft membership. I think it might be an MSDN subscription. I have been so busy at work that I forget what I got. One of the benefits of this program is that I get a subscription to the print edition of MSDN magazine from Microsoft. My first issue came this week.I have not been keeping up with Microsoft technologies for a number of years. Instead I am focusing on the business needs of my current customer. So it was tough to get through a lot of articles in the MSDN magazine. There were a boatload of acronyms – WCF, WPF, and WF. All I could say was WTF.
WCF stands for Windows Communication Foundation. This is a piece of the .NET framework. It is used for building SOA applications. WCF defines the communication of web apps. It uses XML as the protocol.
WPF stands for Windows Presentation Foundation. It is the graphics subsystem of Windows apps. This initially was shipped as part of the .NET framework. It is based on DirectX technology. Developers employ the XAML markup language to describe the UI.
WF stands for Windows Workflow Foundation. Like WPF, WF was first released as part of the .NET framework. It helps developers define how long running programs operate and store their state. Another similarity with WPF is that workflows in WF are defined in XAML.
If I want to get back to staying current with Microsoft technologies, it looks like I got a lot to learn. This is difficult as Microsoft is continually coming up with new technologies to learn. It will be like chasing a moving target.
