I neglected to post about this at the time, but back in June 2008 I had an article published in .NET Developer’s Journal titled “A Walk Through the Process: Creating Services with Contract-First Design Using BizTalk Server 2006 R2 and Windows Communication Foundation.” The article is available on the .NET Developer’s Journal website and the sample code is attached to this post.
BizTalk makes a great platform for true contract-first service development because it is designed around messaging. One of the first things one usually does on a BizTalk project is to load or create XML schemas. With BizTalk Server 2006 R2’s support for Windows Communication Foundation, it’s a natural platform upon which to build services using contract-first design.
The article assumes that you have worked with BizTalk before, but otherwise it is a step-by-step walkthrough of the process to create schemas, create sample orchestrations to carry out the work behind the service interfaces and to publish the schemas as WCF services.