[ilitirit]

> It means an over engineered solution to a simple problem

This is exactly my point. SOA in practice is not a simple problem, and it's the reason WCF exists so of course it's going to be complex. The whole idea of SOA means that you're inherently stuck with the problem of communicating with different different systems that talk different languages, by trying to coerce them into communicating via a standard format, which for all intents and purposes was rarely "standard". And of course these things have to be done in a secure fashion, with logging and auditing every step of the way, and with the ability to change configuration properties by editing a text file instead of having to via a Change Control Board and the entire QA process.

My feeling is that people who were using WCF for "simple" problems were probably using the wrong tool, even though in most cases it would have probably worked fine.

[parasubvert]

SOA in practice is not about the communication framework, it's about the delivery culture and discipline of using published interfaces of any sort in the first place. Amazon is perhaps the most successful example of a CEO-mandated SOA, they didn't really need something like WCF. Netflix used RESTful HTTP mostly for theirs.

Of course everything else you say about logging, changing, etc. is correct - operationalizing a SOA is hard, which is why we see so many frameworks focused on cloud microservices today.

[mattmanser]

No, the reason WCF exists is to share data between programs. It wasn't just for SOA it was for everything.

Your over enthusiasm for WCF seems to stem from your own lack of understanding of the major uses of WCF, you're citing a minor use case of WCF as if it were the primary one.

Also the hints you're dropping of your work programming environment sounds like a beauracratic nightmare.

[ilitirit]

Read the first sentence:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms731082%28v=vs.110...