There's a lot of exciting stuff in the newest CTP of Orcas, but the most interesting for me at the moment is certainly the JSON (and syndication) support.

Normally over the duration of a Proof of Concept lab then I do what all architect's do best and act as the glue to keep the whole thing together which probably directly translates as doing the bits of work that aren't so exciting or are a challenge that needs to be completed outside of the direct proof points to enable the other bits.

I might have a hard time pretending I'm busy if things start to become as straightforward as (I'm lifting this snippet from Matt's site):

   1:  <service name="CustomerService">

   2:      <endpoint contract="ICustomers"

   3:        binding="webHttpBinding"

   4:        bindingConfiguration="jsonBinding"

   5:        address="" behaviorConfiguration="jsonBehavior" />

   6:  </service>

   7:   

   8:  <webHttpBinding>

   9:          <binding name="jsonBinding" messageEncoding="Json" />

  10:  </webHttpBinding>

  11:   

  12:  <behaviors>

  13:     <endpointBehaviors>

  14:          <behavior name ="jsonBehavior">

  15:            <webScriptEnable />

  16:          </behavior>

  17:      </endpointBehaviors>

  18:   </behaviors>

That config will enable a JSON return from a function like this:

   1:  public Customer[] GetCustomers(SearchCriteria criteria)

   2:  {

   3:     // do some work here

   4:     return customerListing;

   5:  }

So combining this new behavior with syndication (RSS and ATOM), POX (and REST) and SOAP behaviors could mean that some real gains can be made using WCF as a basis for 'Web 2.0' (aaaargh!) enabling your applications. Amazing.

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