INTRODUCTION
Chapter 24: Introducing LINQ to XML
Chapter 14 introduced you to the core LINQ programming model—specifically LINQ to Objects. Here,
you will deepen your understanding of Language Integrated Query by examining how to apply LINQ
queries to XML documents. You will begin by learning about the “warts” that were present in .NET’s
initial foray into XML manipulation as you use the types of the System.Xml.dll assembly. With this brief
history lesson behind you, you will explore how to create XML documents in memory, how to persist
them to the hard drive, and how to navigate their contents using the LINQ programming model (LINQ to
XML).
Chapter 25: Introducing Windows Communication Foundation
Until this point in the book, all of the sample applications have executed on a single computer. In this
chapter, you will learn about the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) API that allows you to
build distributed applications in a symmetrical manner, regardless of their underlying plumbing. This
chapter will expose you to the construction of WCF services, hosts, and clients. As you will see, WCF
services are extremely flexible because they allow clients and hosts to leverage XML-based configuration
files to specify addresses, bindings, and contracts declaratively.
Chapter 26: Introducing Windows Workflow Foundation
In this chapter, you will begin by learning about the role of a workflow-enabled application, and you will
come to understand the various ways to model business processes using the .NET 4.0 WF API. Next, you
will examine the scope of the WF activity library, as well as learn how to build custom activities that will
use the custom database access library you created earlier in the book.
Part VII: Windows Presentation Foundation
.NET 3.0 introduced programmers to an amazing API called Windows Presentation Foundation (WFP).
This API has quickly become the heir apparent to the Windows Forms desktop programming model. In
essence, WPF allows you to build desktop applications that incorporate vector graphics, interactive
animations, and data-binding operations using a declarative markup grammar called XAML.
Furthermore, the WPF control architecture provides a trivial way to restyle the look-and-feel of a typical
control radically using little more than some well-formed XAML.
Chapter 27: Introducing Windows Presentation Foundation and XAML
Essentially, WPF allows you to build extremely interactive and media-rich front ends for desktop
applications (and indirectly, web applications). Unlike Windows Forms, this supercharged UI
framework integrates a number of key services (e.g., 2D and 3D graphics, animations, and rich
documents) into a single, unified object model. In this chapter, you will begin your examination of WPF
and the Extendable Application Markup Language (XAML). Here, you will learn how to build WPF
programs without XAML, as well as using nothing but XAML, and by using a combination of both
approaches. You will wrap up the chapter by building a custom XAML editor that you will use for the
remainder of the WPF-centric chapters.
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