I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY WIFE, ROMINA for all the patience she has had with me while I worked on this book. Also a special thanks to my good friend and Tellago CTO, Jesus Rodriguez, whose encouragement and support from the initial to the final stages enabled me to write this book. Finally, very many thanks to the people at Wiley and Kurt Claeys for giving me this opportunity to write a book on one my favorite subjects, WCF.

I'D LIKE TO ACKNOWLEDGE ALL THE PEOPLE who helped support me in writing my share of this book. Without their support this would not have been realized. I'd like to thank my close family, my wife Marijke for letting me spend night after night locked away behind a computer and my kids Milan and Timon for giving me the needed pleasure being together with them between writing sessions. You're making my life a joy. Although the kids are still young, I feel they knew what I was doing all the time: working hard to succeed in a dream. I would also like to thank my parents for believing in me, years ago, when I had the idea of doing something with computers and wanted to study informatics. Special thanks to Robert (Bob) Elliott for giving me the opportunity to write this book and setting up the team. He's a great person and can really motivate people in rough times. I would also like to thank my co-workers at Ordina; they helped me a lot and supported me with useful feedback. Of course, the biggest credit goes to my co-authors Pablo Cibraro, Fabio Cozzolino, and Johann Grabner. After all, they did the hard work in this book. At last I want to thank all the great people working for Microsoft Belgium for their friendship.

I SHOULD LIKE FIRST TO THANK THE OTHER THREE AUTHORS, KURT, PABLO, AND JOHANN, who allowed me to work with them. A special thanks to Pablo who believed in me and in my work. Thanks go out to the DotNetSide User Group team, Tiziana, Vito, Mario, Leo, and Andrea, who always encourage me in each of my community activities, and to all my colleagues, especially Alessandro, Benedetto, Mimmo, and Vincenzo, who give me great moral support. Also many thanks to Claudio, my Research & Development Manager, for his encouragement, support, and attention in my activities.

Really many thanks to the people at Wiley. Robert Elliot and Kelly Talbot with whom there was a huge exchange of mail for the organization and coordination of my work. Tricia Liebig, Jeff Riley, and Doug Holland for their hard work in reviewing the contents of the chapters. Their feedback has been important for the success of the book.

Working on this book has required some sleepless nights spent writing, thanks to my parents and my sister for putting up with me.

Finally, I would like to thanks my wife, Tiziana, for her encouragement and support toward working on this book while we were preparing for our wedding. Words cannot express what I feel about her. Without her I can't do all of this, and my life would never be the same.

FIRST OF ALL, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK MY FAMILY AND MY FRIENDS for their sympathy and also for the enormous support, trust, and the motivation they gave me. Without the pleasant hours and days when my family spoiled me with good food and my friends came around with good beer to give me renewed energy, I fear I would have given up writing and working on the chapters after no more than a few weeks.

In my capacity as a co-founder of the .NET Usergroup South Austria, I must also thank the community members and Microsoft colleagues for their constructive suggestions and lively discussions.

Of course, I also owe thanks to Kelly and Bob, who coordinated the target times and checked that work was on schedule, and above all to Kurt Claeys and Pablo Cibraro for their excellent cooperation.

I hope that this book offers the readers a lot of useful knowledge that they are able to apply in real life. It should provide an ideal starting point for a multi-faceted and insightful introduction of WCF.