Found one of these in my mailbox today. And found some interesting stuff!

Live Webcast: Entity Framework, LINQ, and WCF Data Services for Oracle Database

On Thur., Feb. 9, at 9 a.m. PT, Oracle will host a live webcast on using Microsoft Entity Framework, LINQ, and WCF Data Services with Oracle Database. Led by an Oracle product manager, this session features step-by-step demonstrations that build an Entity Data Model (EDM) from an Oracle schema, query that EDM using LINQ, perform DML on the EDM, and generate an Oracle schema using Model First.

Register here

If you want your WCF service to use certificate-based (X.509) certification to authenticate the users accessing your service, you’ll need to provide the right configuration on both the client and the server side. The keyword here is configuration. When I first started searching for a solution I knew it had to be done in the configuration file, but, as usual, I kind of underestimated the amount of configuring that had to be done.

Especially when you’re looking at the generated configuration file provided by Visual Studio, it’s easy to get lost in all the possible security settings. I once attended a course given by Juval Löwy (IDesign) on WCF where he applauded the fact that the WCF-team had made everything configurable and at the same time warned us for the complexity that came with it.

The solution: There is a easy-to-follow example where you can learn how certificate-based authentication for WCF can be done at Mitch Denny’s blog - Using Certificate-based Authentication and Protection with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)

He starts out by creating a simple WCF service (with 1 HelloWorld-method) and afterwards adding the authentication configuration.

In both Visual Studio 2008 and 2010 there is a bug when you try to use the WCF Service Configuration Editor. The editor should be reachable through the Tools-menu or by right clicking a configuration file (web.config / app.config). This appears to be a known bug. It’s not blocking, but it’s easier to access the editor directly from the configuration file (then the file is immediately loaded in the editor). 

When you just started Visual Studio, and right-click a configuration file, the editor is not visible as an option:

Now open the editor from the tools menu (Tools –> WCF Service Configuration Editor):

Now the editor will open. You can close it immediately and go back to the configuration file. When you right-click it now, you will see that the option to open the editor is available: