Indigo concerns somewhat assuaged
Thanks to Dave Bettin et al for pointing me at the “Indigo: Coming Attractions” PDC presentation. That definitely cleared up some of my concerns about the Indigo programming model. If I understood it correctly, ASMX's
HelloService service = new HelloService();
Console.WriteLine(service.Greeting("ASMX client"));
now becomes:
ServicePort port = new ServicePort();
IHelloService service = port.CreateChannel<IHelloService>(“http://www.helloservice.com/...“);
Console.WriteLine(service.Greeting("Indigo client"));
which is definitely a step in the right direction. My inner Mort still wonders if the ServicePort/Channel stuff always needs to be exposed to the developer. Would a Service class that implements the interface and wraps up the ServicePort goo really be so bad? I'm sure many SOA purists will say yes, and that ASMX's model is all badness, but I'm not totally convinced.
Indigo does look pretty amazing though. Unbelievably extensible (which is fantastic as long as the complexity doesn't bleed through when it shouldn't). Extremely cool stuff.