WCF

Does anyone else think that WCF is not much more than a media campaign?

The product itself just seems half-baked.

For example, suppose you want to consume a wcf service.

You end up having to first point to the service to generate the reference to it. Then you have to load the service in a browser or something to get a command line that you'll need. Then you open up a command prompt and use said command line to generate 2 files that you'll need -- one is a class file and the other is a config file.

Then it's back to Visual Studio where you need to open these and add them to your project.

Then you run the service consumer and get "Could not find default endpoint element that references contract"

(or at least, that's what I get). To be fair you don't always get this message. But if you move the service around -- like put it on your local box to write it, then move it to a devel environment to test it, then move it to QA.... good luck. It turns out that in addition to all this stuff, Microsoft generates some hidden files. Now that really irks me. I mean, if they're generating hidden files, why can't they just generate the stupid files I have to go to the dos prompt to get?

These hidden files don't always get regenerated.

In addition, the reference to the service isn't always fully qualified, which can cause issues when you move it. On top of that, studio caches a lot of binary info that it doesn't remove when you change the location of the service.

I've gotten it all to work before. But I keep wondering why Im bothering. I'm really not getting any benefit from this. I feel like MS just added wcf to put one more thing on its glossy slide show, but didn't actually finish the product.

Am I the only one who feels like that?