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WCF RIA Services just got updated few days ago. WCF RIA services got complex objects, TT templating, etc.

WCF RIA Services have (by default) fast and compact binary transport. WCF Data Services have bloated XML AtomPub format.

Is Microsoft abandoning WCF Data Services for Silverlight in favor of WCF RIA services?

Personally, I like WCF Data Services more, because of the simplicity, openness, cross-platform, and normal (on demand) proxy (re)generation (WCF RIA services regenerate your proxies every time you do build, what leads to recompilation of Silverlight project, what leads to new xap packaging and redeployment, what is usability killer).

Will we ever see support of xml-msbin format for WCF Data Services?

Will it be ever possible to use non-Microsoft DataContext, which will not wrap Nullable fields in where clause, making SQL bloat, ugly and slow?

Those issues make me feel, like WCF Data Services have no more priority...

SteveC
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Lex Lavnikov
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  • I like WCF Data Services as well, but there are countless limitations for Silverlight. It is sometimes painful (the learning curve was high) to manage the context and links manually. Also several LINQ operators (like join, any, all) are not supported, so a WebGet has to be created. We also had a tough time using an sproc to return an anonymous type. I could go on. Is there active development to update the Silverlight implementation? I would like to see it as well. – AlignedDev Apr 22 '11 at 16:16

1 Answers1

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I don't think WCF RIA services should be confused with OData or WCF Data Services. Data Services/OData options should be considered based on the need. If you have a Silverlight application which will not be exposing data to any of your partner or third party then it doesn't make sense to go for WCF Data Services. Instead you will be better off with WCF RIA Services because of the richness it provides. Whereas you are looking for an application which not only caters to you and your intranet or internet PLUS you would like to expose the data to a platform neutral way - that's when you need to think about OData instead of WCF RIA.

In short OData is breaking the data silos and exposing your data in a platform independent way. Be it Java, PHP, obj-c, etc., etc., they all know how to consume OData because of the standard XML + ATOM/ATOMPUB format.

Hope I made my point clear :)

SteveC
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kashyapa
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