Silverlight3: What to use: WebClient or database with RIA - database

I'm asking for the advice. I'm working at the Silverlight 3 application and now I should select the mean how to save the information and get it. I could save the necessary info in files (from 1 to 300K size) or I could save them in database. If I would use WebClient for accessing to separate file there's very low loading of the server. If I get data from database the server would load much more I think and the code on the server too.
Please correct me if I'm not right.
I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
Thanks

there are additional considerations if you use a file that is localized to the users machine. If you wish to save data w/o any user intervention then you are limited to using Isolated Storage, which has constraints on the size of your data. Otherwise, you have to ask the user for information on where to save/load the file. This is due to the security model used by silverlight.
i am thinking that a Database and the RIA framework might be the way to go.
just my 2ยข

If you are saving and loading the entire file at a time, then it might be okay to use a WebClient. This might take a little coding to handle errors that may result in incomplete saves.
If you're serializing some objects or xml data and storing that in a file, then you should probably be using a database instead.
Edit: It can be a pain to get WebClient or HttpWebRequest working correctly with GET/POST, but WCF can also be a pain to configure if you haven't done it before. WCF is probably better style, and you'll want to use a binary binding and send the file across as a byte[].

Related

Best way to store data in wpf app

I just want to know about the best way to store simple data in wfp application. I'm using SQL CE, but sometimes I need to store simple data (for instance one string). I don't want to use for it db, and I think it's the right decision.
Could you please give me a guidance on how should I do that in best way or any useful resource?
Is there any particular features data settings storage for pattern MVVM?
Thank You.
Use Settings for exactly this scenario. It's simple, allows per user and system wide scenarios and is build into Visual Studio nicely.
Double clicking on Settings.settings in the Properties folder of your project (in Solution Explorer) brings up the editor and you can access these in code with something simple like Properties.Settings.Default.StringPropertyX.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730869(v=vs.80).aspx
if you're going to be upgrading in the future, I suggest that you create a small abstraction layer that you can upgrade to using any DB or other source, when you need to.
Until you do the upgrade, I would suggest a simple XML file using XDocument and XElement (and the rest of that api).
The reason why I am suggesting this is because you can use Linq on them easily and this enables you to change the provider in the future without any problems.
here is the MSDN on XDocument http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.linq.xdocument.aspx .
I hope this proves to be helpful to you ;-)
Cheers,
Max
p.s. lemme know if this is what you needed or not!
If you publish the application through ClickOnce then you can use IsolatedStorage. It is pretty easy to use, just a few lines of code. You can learn how to use it on WPF isolated storage.
If you don't publish it through ClickOnce then I would suggest you keep it simple and use static class.
you can use file system.. try to create xml file or csv file in the wpf app directory...
you can read and write to same file.. so that you can save what ever you want to that file and read from the same file..

.NET Module for Email to Database

I'm looking for a robust module that will monitor an email account (ideally POP) and load each new email into a database (or cloud-based storage solution) as it arrives. This can either be an open source module, a commercial module or even SaaS. Ideally, would be easy to use from .NET.
Simply put, trying to avoid re-inventing the wheel.
Do you know of any such modules or services? Did you have a positive experience with them?
I've used Email2DB with some success.
http://www.email2db.com/
You can set up your own parsing rules for incoming e-mails and place data wherever you see fit as a result.
How about OpenPop.net? That won't automatically save it to a db, but you should be able to consume it from the POP3Client object.

How do I put and replace a file using in a client machine in a Silverlight app?

I'm trying to make a Silverlight app which has a local sqlite file to search some data when the app gets offline. I found the following library, http://code.google.com/p/csharp-sqlite/ and it seems pretty nice.
So, what I want to know is, what is a good approach to have and place a file which might be replaced by automatically when the data in a server gets updated at some points?
I've tried to put a file into a folder under the app, but I couldn't access to the file by using csSQLite.sqlite3_open (This method is from the library above). Sorry, I'm pretty new to Silverlight, so my question might be very odd.
Thanks in advance,
yokyo
It doesn't look like this library has been specifially coded for Silverlight. Despite being a pure C# implementation its still likely to assume the full .NET API is available. This is not true in Silverlight.
Specifically Silverlight cannot ordinarily access the local file system. The SQLLite code would need to be modified to understand Silverlight's IsolatedStorage. It would also have to limit its file operations to those that are supported by the streams available Isolated Storage.
The creation of a DB-esq. data source in Silverlight is typically done by create Classes the represent records and collections of records, using LINQ to query them and Xml serialisation into Isolated storage to persist them.
Here is a hacked version of the SQLite code to work with Silverlight, you can use it for some ideas on what to do: http://www.itwriting.com/blog/1695-proof-of-concept-c-sqlite-running-in-silverlight.html

How do I create a database on the computer in flash?

I want to create a a application in actionscipt 3.0 that allows the user to listen to music and read descriptions of the music. For this to happen i suppose there should be a database where the textbits and music is located and then flash fetch the info when the correct buttons are pushed. The database will contain up to 100 tracks and textbits.
The application will function on a stand that won't have a connection to the internet.
What is the easiest way to do this in actionscript 3.0?
If any of you are familiar with UML and thinks this might help in understanding the problem, then here is use-case and flow-chart:
alt text http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/1498/flowchart2.jpg
alt text http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/1000/usercase.jpg
Thanks in advance.
The easiest way to do what you're asking is probably to store the files in a directory on the machine the application is going to be running on, and then design an XML structure for storing your data. The XML is easily loaded in to Flash at runtime and is easily edittable.
Your other option would be running a database server on the machine, creating web services that run locally and push/pull the data from the database, and then call those services from your Flash application.
The first option is most definitely the easiest and should be able to provide exactly what you need. The second would be more geared towards a distributed Flash application where you needed a central data repository for the clients.
If you're building an AIR application, you can use the integrated SQLITE database. But, i agree with Justin, the easiest way is to use a XML file.
You can probably consider using "Local Shared Objects" which is a kind of cookie, with bigger capacity (100Kb by default, but you can change it). Compared to other solutions already proposed, it has then advantage of not requiring any web server.

Writing data into a database using a fully REST web service

How would one create a REST web service to write a row into a databse table. Use the follwoing scenario:
The table is called Customer - the
data to be inserted into the row would
be the name, addresss, telephone
number, email.
I think its impossible to describe the whole thing end to end in Java or C#, and I would never expect that, but here are the questions I have popping into my head as I prepare for coding:
How the URI would look (eg. if you use this URL - http://www.example.com/)?
What info would go into the HTTP envelope?
Would I use POST when writing to the database in this way?
Do I use a resource to store the posted data from the client? Is this even necessary if the data is being written to a database anyway?
When the data to be writeen into the db is recieved by the server - how do I physically insert it into the database - do I call some method on the server to actually write the data (in Java)? - this doesn't seem to fit with truely REST architecture - shunning RPC calls.
Should I even be bothering writing to a DB - should I be storing my data as a resource?
As you can see I need a few issues clearing in my head. Any help much appreciated.
First of all, I'm not either java nor c# expert and I don't exactly know what means do these languages have to support REST design, but in general:
http://www.example.com/customers - customers is a collection of resources and you want to add a new resource to this collection
It depends on various things - you should probably set the content-type header (according to the data format in which you are sending the representation) and set some authentication headers if you need it.
Yes, you always use POST to create a new entry in a collection of resources.
I don't fully understand this question, to be honest. What do you mean by "inmediately writing data into the database"?
REST is primarily just a style of communication between server and a client. It doesn't say anything about how you should handle the data received by using it. The usual way how modern web approaches (MVC style frameworks) solve it, is by routing every REST action to a method of some class (usually a controller instance) where you handle the received parameters (eg. save them to the database) and generate a response to be sent back.
For a very brief and very clear introduction to REST have a look at this short video.
RESTful Web Services, published by O'Reilly and Associates, seems to fit the bill you're looking for.
As far as doing it in Java, Sun has a page on it.

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