Silverlight 4 and WCF RIA service (1)

There are some useful links here which we can follow by:

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/05/17/silverlight-4-tools-for-vs-2010-and-wcf-ria-services-released.aspx
http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/WCF-RIA-Services-Part-1-Getting-Started.aspx
http://www.dotnetscraps.com/dotnetscraps/post/Silverlight-and-NET-RIA-Services-Step-by-Step-6.aspx
http://peterkellner.net/2010/01/20/riaservices-silverlight-4-tutorial-svcc-part1of7-introduction/

In 2008, I begin to use Silverlight 2 and ADO.net data service, see my previous articles in 2008. RIA service is pretty much the same concept, it is a WCF service which can let silverlight client side application doing Data layer manipulation.

And I will also write something based on my study and practice.

One thing that people are now doing the debate about silverlight vs html5 furture. silverlight comparing html5 need to install the plugin and problem with crossplat form and performance issue make it seems not that attractive comparing to the html5. But my personal opinion is not need to worry about this too much:

Silverlight belongs to C#/.net developers, and most .Net developer likes this as it seperate the view with C# code. Especially when introduced the MVVM pattern, this get the C# developer more confortbale in Web development.

Silverlight in many places is like a subset of WPF although they are different projects. For developer, SL and WPF are quite similiar in many places. Even SL is dead(I don't think this happens in years), the SL developer can switch to WPF easily.

The techniques comming along with SL such as RIA Service is also useful in ASP.net applications.

On the other hand, HTML5 is more client side code. As a .Net people, developer may not like HTML that much comparing to SL. Current comparing to SL, html5 doesn't have good developement tools. And it doesn't seperate the present layer to logic layer that good comparing to Silverlight. But this also point out a trend of web developement, for the developers the script languages are also important. If some one who is going to take the MCTS 70-515 web developement exam, this also shows Microsoft trend that JQuery library/ AJAX technology became more important than before for .Net web developers.

Now let take look at Silverlight 4 with WCF RIA service.