I have to bind sql table to one of the grid in my silverlight page.
I have seen all the examples in web using wcf services or web services for databinding.
Can i use datalayer dll (regular way of datalayer classes) to bind data to silverlight pages.
Anyone please suggest a good article on this.I am used to the regular way of devolopment like datalayer as dll.
Is this possible in silverlight?If this is possible why system.data dll's are missing from the project.?
Thanks
SNA
System.Data.dlls are missing from Silverlight because Silverlight is a subset of .Net designed to run in a browser - and browsers don't usually have databases available! For this reason you usually have to create custom objects and return these through a WCF service.
Scott Guthrie's tutorial might be helpful as a guide to building Data Driven silverlight applciations.
Looking a few months into the future, you'll soon be able to use .Net RIA Services (Rich Internet Applications) for this kind of thing. Here's a link to the preview
Related
Is there any way to get full support for RIA Services+EF for WPF application. I've read previous threads but looks like solution's offered there lacks's essential functionalty like transparent CRUD and Validation API support.
Or is there alternative solutions with other popular communication frameworks/ORM that supports that functionality (to summarize - transparent work with POCO classes in 3-tier enviromnent).
You might want to try looking at WCF Data Services.
Essentially what this does is abstract EntityFramework's DataContext over a WCF service using the OData REST API. Visual Studio generates all of the necessary plumbing for you so that on your client-side you can access your data tier remotely using the same LINQ queries that you would use when accessing the data source directly.
I have created
a) a basic application MVVMLight framework.
b) another project in the same solution having an Entity Model (NorthwindModel.edmx).
c) a WCF service to retrieve data through the entity model.
Now I want to link a, b, and c together. How do the project mentioned in a) above interact with the other two? How can I display/bind the data using the edmx in the View of the MVVM?
Do I have to write code in the ViewModel class/classes to achieve this?
I browsed through many websites, checked many questions here on SO, but none seems to throw any light for me in this regard. The examples that I saw involved a lot of coding in the ViewModel class. If that's the only way to go about it, then why do people say MVVM with Silverlight requires very little coding?
You can use WCF RIA Services to bridge the gap between ASP.NET and Silverlight.
Get Started - WCF RIA Services
You will need to create a Silverlight library project, add entity files as link to the project.
This will enable you to use the Entities in your Silverlight application.
how to add files as link
Actually you need a Web project where you host your webservices, then you need your business logic layer and data access layer where you retrieve data, then you need the entities and a silverlight entities project. After this you create your Silverlight project and add web service reference to it and thats it, now you are ready to use MVVM.
I think you could use this to refer how to build a solution with multiple projects and also have entity framework with WCF RIA services.
To ensure you project is running MVVM light you could use Nuget to inject the necessary files into your client project. Information on this is available here
Since days I am reading and researching and still struggling how to create the perfect infrastructure. Since there are no Prism 4.0 templates as such, I came up with a strategy, but I need to be sure this is the right strategy and I would appreciate an advice from experienced PRISM/RIA developers.
I use PRISM 4.0, RIA Services 1.0 Sp1 Beta, Silverlight 4.0, Entity Framework 4.0
1) Client side
I created first a "Silverlight Business Application", which creates a Web.host and a Silverlight client application with implemented RIA authorization. The initially created Silverlight client application shall be used as the Shell project.
2) Infrastructure project (Common)
This project would contain some common Prism MEF attributes and perhaps the entity models that are auto generated by RIA as well as the Service Interface. The idea is to create a simple Silverlight Class Library, and under Properties of the project, I would select for the dropdown ‘WCF Ria Services Link ’ to point to the host.Web project that contains the Ria Services. Then after the rebuilding, I am able to see the entity models within the Class Library and these could then be shared between the prism modules to feed their ViewModels etc.
3) Service layer
Should I create the EF4 Model on the Web.host project and add the Domain Service in there? Then I would extract an interface from the Domain Service and put the interface into the Infrastructure (Common) project. The Web.Host therefore needs to reference the Infrastructure (common) project to get access to the interface. On the client side the interface may be used by MEF to retrieve or mock the service . However I am concerned about the service referencing a common project that contains also the client-side generated entities.
4) Authorization
Also a bit concerned about the authorization, shall I leave everything on the Shell project? Or do I have to move anything to the Infrastructure (common) project to share it?
Since this is my first time designing with PRISM, I might have misunderstood or forgotten some aspects. Please feel free to improve my suggestions.
Your help is highly appreciated
Kave
After two weeks of intense research, this blog couldn't put it better together:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dphill/archive/2009/08/17/prism-and-net-ria-services.aspx
There're nice Quick Start templates for Prism, I found it at blog http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dphill so it looks quite nice, I used it also created RIA Service library so everything now is separated:
1) WEb project
2) Ria Service on web
3) generated RiaService client code as separate and shared assembly and it is used by modules. that's it.
Our client has a Desktop application (VBA and Access) that they are using for the past 10 years and it is buggy and they want to upgrade it. I want to use the latest MS technologies and plan to make this a web application using .NET 4.0, C#, SQL server and MVC running on the Intranet.
Since the application has many visual components (about 10 different tabs on top and each tab has atleast 10 different controls on it), I was wondering what is the best way to implement the UI layer a .NET web application. The 2 candidates are Silverlight and Telerik controls (we have license for this).
Some issues to consider :
Silverlight Plug-in : Since this new application will only be used internally on the intranet, I dont think installing a Silverlight plug-in will be an issue. Also, since its on the intranet, hopefully download speed should not be an issue for SL apps.
Telerik-MVC : It is really rich in functionality, however, I played around with it (.NET version not MVC) using some of the controls and if there is anything out of the recommended way to use a control, its a pain to get it working.
Skill-set : Do I want to learn how to use a tool (Telerik) or would I be better off learing a technology (Silverlight) in terms of future projects.
I would like to hear any feedback/ issues to help me decide which way to go.
If you are replacing a desktop application then going with Silverlight may be the best approach.
With Silverlight you are writing an application that happens to be delivered across the internet (well intranet in this case). This can be as stateful as you need to be. You have good access (no pun intended) to the database via the WCF RIA Services.
There's also the Prism MVVM model you can develop on top of.
However, I'd double check with the client as to what they are expecting.
Telerik also do a set of Silverlight controls.
If the project time permits, go for Silverlight. Also, if needed, it's possible to create a desktop version (WPF) out of the Silverlight project.
Issues with Telerik control set(or any control set), if you need a control that doesn't exist in the current set, you'll have to either buy from Telerik, or create your own. In the latter case, the whole UI aesthetics might break because it's not easy to create a control matches the tool set.
I've heard the comment several times, once in one of Shawn Wildermuth's podcasts, that Silverlight is great, but might not be so good for 'entire' internet applications. This comment never get's amplified, but the implication seems to be that you would use Silverlight in conjunction with standard aspx web pages.
So far, the only downside I can see to an all Silverlight application is that the XAP file could get very large, meaning that when a web app is opened, there would be a very noticeable delay.
Most of the apps I do in .NET would be considered small. They are business / CRUD apps of maybe 25 aspx screens along with the supporting cast.
Does anyone have an expanation of the downside of a mostly Silverlight app?
Thanks
Mike Thomas
I'm aware of Shawn's comment, but I think it's a bit dated. If I remember correctly that comment was made before Silverlight could easily handle browser navigation, deep linking and SEO. Those issues are addressed now (largely thanks to RIA services) and Silverlight is a first class web citizen imo. I've done 2 Silverlight only business apps (i.e. the Silverlight content is full screened; there are no ASPX parts to the apps) and have been quite successful with them. A big plus about creating a Silverlight only site is that it's very easy to debug homogeneous content. Take a look at .NET RIA Services if you're seeing holes that need to be plugged when creating a SL business app.
EDIT: RIA Services is Silverlight framework that facilitates development of data oriented Silverlight applications - it's currently in a preview (i.e. not finished) release state but my experience has been that it's stable. WCF is a communications framework used by Silverlight to enable client to server connectivity; it's very similar to traditional web services. RIA Services uses WCF to perform client/server communication. Check out Brad Abram's post "What is RIA Services" for a quick overview here http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/03/19/what-is-net-ria-services.aspx then read his full 25 post series for all the details on RIA Services here http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2009/08/02/business-apps-example-for-silverlight-3-rtm-and-net-ria-services-july-update-summary.aspx
If you want to see a complete Silverlight application in action, check out http://www.mediacourtyard.com. They have implemented a complete CMS front-end in Silverlight. Check out the demo, it appears to be fairly stable and functional.
(I have nothing to do with them btw. I trawl the web for Silverlight apps a lot and that CMS is the coolest "full" app I've found so far.)