Chapter 8. RIA Services and SQL Azure
The previous chapter on using SQL Azure with WCF services involved a lot of code being handwritten. Methods to expose each data type (Employee and Division) needed to be created, as well as the individual methods to allow the client to create new entities. The WCF methods also did not make it easy to query a subset of data.
RIA Services helps developers to be more productive by simplifying data access between the server and client. This chapter will explore the following topics:
RIA Services
Using Silverlight with RIA Services, SQL Azure, and Entity Framework
RIA Services
RIA Services is a framework that simplifies the process of building enterprise applications on the Silverlight platform. It makes it easy for a Silverlight client to query data on a server (from a database or other data store) and for the client to create, edit, and delete the data. RIA Services also provides additional features such as allowing validation rules to be defined that are run...
