Working with WCF RIA Services

This article discusses WCF, WCF RIA Services and their
features and benefits. It also discusses why WCF RIA Services are
useful and where they come in handy while developing data driven applications
in Silverlight. Silverlight is a great tool that you can use to work with data
retrieved from different services. With some knowledge of asynchronous
programming and callbacks, you can use Silverlight to develop applications that
are bound to data retrieved from different services that can scale over time.
The article focuses on how Silverlight and WCF RIA Services can be used in
conjunction with Silverlight to access the server objects easily using
reflection.

What is Windows Communication Foundation?

Windows Communication
Foundation (better known as WCF) is a framework from Microsoft that you can
make use of to implement service-oriented applications. It is service-oriented,
supports messaging and offers a reliable, transacted service oriented
framework. It is a platform that can be used to design and implement platform
independent, scalable services. It is a framework from Microsoft that provides
a platform for unification of a number of enterprise technologies under one
roof. MSDN
states
, "Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is Microsoft’s unified
programming model for building service-oriented applications. It enables
developers to build secure, reliable, transacted solutions that integrate
across platforms and interoperate with existing investments."

The WCF transport channels support two modes for
transferring data. These are:

  • Buffered – in this mode, the complete data is held in the memory
    buffer until the transfer is complete
  • Streamed – in this mode, the message body is exposed as a stream
    and data is read in one chunk at a time

Windows Communication Foundation Version 4 was released some
time ago by Microsoft. Note that WCF was introduced as part of .NET
Framework
3.0. There have been quite a few enhancements and new features
introduced in WCF 4.0. Some of the major enhancements in WCF include support
for REST based Services and the introduction of WCF RIA
Services
.

What are WCF RIA Services?

When you need to build applications that are data centric,
the data can come from disparate systems. In order to get this data you would
need to have the business logic and the server objects reside at the client
side. This becomes very cumbersome and takes up a lot of memory at the client
side. This is exactly where WCF RIA Services fit in. WCF RIA Services has been
introduced in .NET Framework 4 and Silverlight
4 to build applications without the need of service plumbing to push or pull
data from the client side.

WCF RIA Services can be used to simplify the n-tier
applications such as Silverlight applications. WCF RIA Services can be used to
avoid duplicating the application logic both on the server and the client side.
You can use WCF RIA Services to makes the application logic residing on the
server available to the client without the need of duplicating the application
logic on the client side. Also, when your business rules or application logic
on the server side are updated, the client automatically updates with the
latest middle tier logic once the application is compiled. Note that WCF RIA
Services are built on top of WCF Services.

Difference between WCF and WCF RIA Services

This section discusses the basic differences between WCF and
WCF RIA Services.

1. In
WCF RIA Services, the client side objects are created using reflection at the
time of compilation based on the server side objects instead of service
contracts exposed at the server side. This provides a rich object model as the
business rules and other objects are made available at the client side. In
essence, this implies that you can create your LINQ query at the client side
and execute it at the server side as the LINQ
queries can be serialized.

2. The
RIA services provide support for serializing LINQ queries much like ADO.NET
data services.

Summary

The MSDN states: "WCF RIA Services simplifies the
development of n-tier solutions for Rich Internet Applications (RIA), such as
Silverlight applications. A common problem when developing an n-tier RIA
solution is coordinating application logic between the middle tier and the
presentation tier. To create the best user experience, you want your RIA
Services client to be aware of the application logic that resides on the
server, but you do not want to develop and maintain the application logic on
both the presentation tier and the middle tier. RIA Services solves this
problem by providing framework components, tools, and services that make the
application logic on the server available to the RIA Services client without
requiring you to manually duplicate that programming logic. You can create a
RIA Services client that is aware of business rules and know that the client is
automatically updated with the latest middle tier logic every time that the
solution is re-compiled." WCF provides you a programming model and a
framework that has support for interoperable, reliable, secure communication.
In essence, it provides a framework for designing and developing a service-oriented
messaging system that is reliable, transacted. This article discussed the
basics of WCF and WCF RIA Services and how the later can be implemented in
applications. In a future article in this series of articles on WCF RIA
Services, I will illustrate how to get started with WCF RIA Services. Happy
reading!

References

WCF RIA
Services

WCF RIA Services e-Book Author: Brian Noyes

A Developer’s
Introduction to Windows Communication Foundation 4

WCF TCP-based File
Server

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