Non-enterprise uses for WCF?

Question

I'm interested in gaining a better understanding of WCF.

Of course, I can read books and tutorials about it, but it seems that a better way would be to actually come up with some project idea (either open-source or a startup) which would actually benefit from using WCF, and then build it using WCF.

What are your ideas for small-scale projects which might benefit from WCF?

Answer 1

I'm not sure it is really a matter of scale that drives a decision to use WCF. If a learning project is all you are interested in, then take a normal idea for a project, and turn the entire data access layer into WCF calls.

This should give you a fair understanding of all the little nooks and crannies of WCF, and allow you to fail in a controlled manner. That way you can make decisions in the future about when are where it is best to apply a service boundary using WCF.

As was already mentioned, anything to do with the web can benefit tremendously from WCF. Heck, you could build a pure JavaScript and HTML 5 application using WCF without ever touching ASP.Net.

Answer 2

A hosted service that a mobile device (such as a WP7 or iPhone) could connect with to retrieve data