Interview : Mike Liu, author of WCF 4.0 Multi-tier Services Development with LINQ to Entities book

Mike Liu is the author of our recently published WCF 4.0 Multi-tier Services Development with LINQ to Entities book which works as a hands-on guide to build SOA applications on the Microsoft platform.

Mike is a principal engineer at a student loan management company, working with other engineers to implement a Business Process Management Suite (BPMS) system for their new business.

He started his career as a Unix C developer, moved to Windows C++ then C#, and now works as a full time JavaScript developer within IBM BPMS using Eclipse.

Packt: Your book is published now. How is the feeling of being a published author?

Mike: It’s great to have a book published. I have been an author for a few books, but this one is special for me, as it is the second edition of my previous book. This proves that my previous book has been a success. Otherwise we won’t bother to publish the second edition for it, right?

Packt: What benefits did writing a book bring to your specialist area?

Mike: I have to keep up with the latest technology. The previous book was based on .NET 3.5, while this new book is based on .Net 4. I also changed the ORM from LINQ to SQL to Entity Framework. Now I have expertise on Visual Studio 2010 and EF 4.0. By the way, VS 2010 is fabulous!

Packt: Our authors usually have full-time jobs whilst writing for us. Was this the case for you and how did you approach managing your time?

Mike: Yes, I had a full time job while writing this book. The good thing is I take commuter rails to and from work, so I finished most of the work on the train. Nevertheless, it’s been hard to balance work, family life and writing this book.

Packt: Whilst writing your book, did you find that it overshadowed personal life in any way? How did you deal with this?

Mike: At a certain degree, yes, it did overshadow my personal life. I had less time to play with my kids, and less time to sleep. So I went to Disney World with my family right after I finished this book.

Packt: Do you have any advice for other authors who may be interested in writing for Packt, but are still unsure?

Mike: Make your decision as early as possible. Technology changes so fast that you don’t want your book to be outdated soon after it is published.

Packt: Do you have any tips for other authors, or tricks that you learnt whilst writing, that you'd like to share?

Mike: Plan enough time for the re-writing phase. Trust me, it takes a lot more time to re-write and it’s even more stressful than the original writing phase.

Packt: How did you find the overall experience of writing your book for Packt?

Mike: It’s been a great pleasure to write for Packt. Every one in Packt is working very hard and efficient.

Packt: During the writing process, did you come across any issues/ difficulties that affected your writing and how did you overcome these?

Mike: I came across a few issues. I planned to create a Silverlight application as a test client in my book, but then I found Silverlight 4.0 didn’t support wsHttp binding. I had to change to use a WPF application. Also on Windows 7, I could not add a service reference to my WCF service within Visual Studio 2010. I had to add a reference on my Windows XP PC, then copy all files over to my Windows 7 PC. Later I discovered it was due to a permission issue of windows\temp folder. I have included this valuable information in my book.

Packt: Was there anything interesting that happened during the writing of the book?

Mike: One of the interesting things of writing this book was, it inspired my son to write a book. While I was finishing my book, he also finished his book.

Now I am helping him to find a publisher for his new book (it’s a kid’s book).

Packt: How did Packt’s Acquisition Editors help you - what kind of things did they help you with and how did they support you throughout the writing process?

Mike: David Barnes was the acquisition editor for my book. He gave me a lot of useful information as how the process goes, who’s who at Packt, and he responded to my emails super fast! He worked along with all other staff at Packt to make my books a reality. They are a great team!

Packt: What projects, if any, are you working on at the moment?

Mike: Currently I am working on a BPMS system. I am setting up the framework within our BPMS system to integrate the front end Java system with the back end WCF services. To have a deep understanding of the back end WCF services helped me a lot to invoke them from the client side applications.

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