How to use WCF RIA Services in PRISM 4? - silverlight-4.0

I am developing Silverlight application with Prism 4 and WCF RIA service.
I had searched on google to get sample explaining this, but failed to get any successful output.
I am confuse about how to use RIA service in PRISM Application.
Please suggest any link which provide sample for this.
Help me.

You can use WCF RIA and PRISM 4 to develop a Silverlight application. Each of the technologies is targeted at a different part of your application.
WCF RIA services provides you with the tools to communicate from client to server to persist your data.
PRISM4 is designed to allow you to construct modular well architected Silverlight (and WPF) applications.
I have a large LOB application built using this approach. I use PRISM4 modularity to load modules into my application. The viewmodels in each of the modules connect to WCF RIA domain service contexts to get and modify data.
I'd recommend looking at Nikhilk's Book Club sample application for the RIA side http://www.nikhilk.net/RIA-Services-MIX10-Slides-Code.aspx.

Related

WCF with MVC application and mobile app

I'm just wondering how to approach to my project.
In my application I have:
MVC4 project
DB_Project with Interfaces and Models
Repository_Project with interfaces implemantation - I'm using Ninject
Next step is mobile app(XAMARIN), and here is the question:
What kind of WCF project should I choose and why...WCF Service Application or WCF Service Library?
Should I add this project like any other or create separate one?
After choosing WCF project, how to use reference to Repository_Project - is this the right way?
I will give you some thoughts to consider.
1- Your Xamarin app must communicate with an asp.net web api / mvc exposed to the internet. I dont recommend exposing a WCF service to the internet for many reasons.
2- In the Data layer, repositories are abstractions to access your EF dbContext and not to call WCF services.
3- You only add complexity when justified. If you are willing to create WCF project for the xamarin app to communicate with, then i hardly discourage you. WCF project may be created in your case if you have some security policy that enforces 3-tiers architecture where the web api needs a middle tier to access the database. Otherwise, you dont need it.
2-tiers:
Xamarin -> web api -> SQL Server
3-tiers:
Xamarin -> web api -> wcf -> SQL Server

wcf ria services hosting

I have a silverlight application and uses wcf ria services. The question is about the options to host the wcf ria services.
In all the articles I read says, the RIA services should be hosted on the same web application where the silverlight app is hosted.
An alternative is , we can use WCF RIA class library, but still this need to be referenced in the silverlight web app where the silverlight is hosted.
I am wondering , for a cleaner implementation , can I host the WCF RIA services in any other web apps?
The default scenario for WCF RIA Services assumes that you will create your business objects to be shared between the server and the client within your web project, and these will be replicated within your Silverlight project.
However, this scenario doesn't create an ideal separate “middle tier” where your business objects are contained within a separate assembly that can then be reused between applications.
This is where the WCF RIA Services Class Library project template comes in. It is possible, however, to move the business logic out of the Web project and into a separate class
library, using the WCF RIA Services Class Library project template. So you can have your entities and metadata classes in a separate project from your server project. But you must add a reference to it in your web project where the silverlight is hosted.
This is a reasonable thing

Integrating WF4.0 with Silverlight 4.0

I am new to both Silverlight and WF (both 4.0 version), i was wondering if we can integrate WF4.0 with Silverlight 4.0 in such a way that, when we click on some button in sliverlight UI the workflow should be executed and the output from the final activity of the workflow is displayed in the Silverlight screen. If it can be done then please provide me with some link or any tutorial where i can learn about this and start implementing.
Thanks in advance.
In WF 4.0 you can have workflows started (or progressed) by WCF endpoints. Therefore, if you can call the WCF endpoint from your Silverlight application you should be able to do this quite easily. Lots of information on Microsoft's WF Developer Centre.
Assuming you are using Visual Studio 2010, you can get up and running with a very simple Silverlight -> WF example very quickly...
Create a new project (and new solution) from the 'WCF Workflow Service Application' template. The project will be named DeclarativeServiceLibraryX. This should give you a very simple WorkflowService definition using SequentialService that simply receives the request from a client (with a single integer argument) and sends a response (with the same value). This project is created as a web project so includes a Web.config.
Create a new Silverlight 4 application. You will be asked if you want to host the Silverlight app in the existing web project (created in step #1). Probably a good idea to say yes.
In the Silverlight application, select 'Add Service Reference...', then 'Discover/ Services in Solution'. Service1.xamlx will appear as an option, select it and click Ok.
VS will then generate a WCF service reference client. You could then add a TextBox & Button to capture some data, create the client and send the service call across the wire to the WCF Workflow Service. This Workflow Service could then be modified as necessary (or use these steps to add a WCF Workflow Service to your own web project).
One area that might be challenging is modifying the WCF service bindings to be compatible with Silverlight; perhaps create a Silverlight-compatible WCF service in your server-side project first, then create a WF WCF endpoint and look at the generated code & config to see how to put things together.
The MSDN Endpoint blog is also a useful resource for learning more about WF and WCF (especially with the new style lightweight REST-style 'WCF Web HTTP' bindings, which might be more suitable for consumption by a Silverlight client.
I am assuming that you don't want to host the workflow inside the Silverlight app itself, as WF is a full .Net framework component rather than being Silverlight compatible. I'm sure you could write your own lightweight workflow framework that runs inside Silverlight, but given workflow is generally a multi-user, server-side concern this probably wouldn't be very useful concern.
I found an example with WPF here for these samples. Hope they will help you a bit or at least give a general look at this topic.
Workflow Foundation is not included in the Silverlight 4.0 runtime and thus cannot be used within a Silverlight app. So Silx answer do not relate at all to Silverlight. And James Websters answer is the only solution to make use of WF from Silverlight.
You cant use WF with silverlight.... the only way is , You can call WCF service to access WF as explained by James Webster.

What are the differences between WCF and traditional ASP.NET Web

I am new to WCF and Web Services in general. What are the improvements that WCF brings to the table? Can anyone give a side-by-side example of a traditional web service and the same one written using WCF and point out the differences and advantages?
Duplicate question Moving ASP.net webservices to WCF
EDIT: Think i found the answer you where looking for a side-by-side code based comparison and even better it's from MSDN: Comparing ASP.NET Web Services to WCF Based on Development
There are several related questions:
Difference between aspnet web method and wcf webservice
Benfits of using WCF
Moving aspnet web services to wcf
However you asked for a side by side comparison in which case i think Sam's Wcf vs ASMX blog article is more what you are looking for.
Quoting ad-verbatim (let me know if i should just leave it as a link):
WCF vs. ASMX
Protocols Support
WCF
HTTP
TCP
Named pipes
MSMQ
Custom
UDP
ASMX
HTTP only
Hosting
ASMX
Can be hosted only with HttpRuntime on IIS.
WCF
A WCF component can be hosted in any kind of environment in .NET 3.0, such as a console application, Windows application, or IIS.
WCF services are known as 'services' as opposed to web services because you can host services without a web server.
Self-hosting the services gives you the flexibility to use transports other than HTTP.
WCF Backwards Compatibility
The purpose of WCF is to provide a unified programming model for distributed applications.
Backwards compatibility
WCF takes all the capabilities of the existing technology stacks while not relying upon any of them.
Applications built with these earlier technologies will continue to work unchanged on systems with WCF installed.
Existing applications are able to upgrade with WCF
New WCF transacted application will work with existing transaction application built on System.Transactions
WCF & ASMX Integration
WCF can use WS-* or HTTP bindings to communicate with ASMX pages
Limitations of ASMX:
An ASMX page doesn’t tell you how to deliver it over the transports and to use a specific type of security. This is something that WCF enhances quite significantly.
ASMX has a tight coupling with the HTTP runtime and the dependence on IIS to host it. WCF can be hosted by any Windows process that is able to host the .NET Framework 3.0.
ASMX service is instantiated on a per-call basis, while WCF gives you flexibility by providing various instancing options such as Singleton, private session, per call.
ASMX provides the way for interoperability but it does not provide or guarantee end-to-end security or reliable communication.
WCF is far wider in scope than ASP.Net webservices.
WCF can run in any application. APS.Net webservices only run in IIS.
WCF supports models like ReST, Remoting, SOAP, MSMQ etc. ASP.Net only supports SOAP
WCF is more configurable.
WCF supports a more declarative way of programming. You can get more done with less code.
ASP.NET Web Services are pretty much just that. Web Services. They're SOAP/WSDL based and provide their services only to the web.
WCF Services offer a much more flexible framework. For instance, depending on how the service is defined, it can be a Web Service hosted in IIS which serialized its data via XML and uses the REST model...or it can be a Remote Windows Service that is hosted in it's own process and serializes its data via binary. All of this is achieved using the different Service/Data contracts in WCF.
In short...you can make a WCF service look almost identical to a .NET 2.0 Web Service fairly easily but, with a little work, you can do a WHOLE LOT MORE.

Updating my Model in MVC pattern to WCF REST - Services Layer Implementation

I have a MVC pattern in place where I have been developing WinForms and WebForms against. Now, I would like to move onto Silverlight and thus need to 'web services'-enable my Model layer.
Where do I start? I can't seem to find any good resources. Many talk about EF or ADO.NET Data Services. What do I need to do to my Model layer to enable it for WCF REST?
There are many approaches you can take to build your server-side
ADO.NET Data Services - here is some documentation
ASP.NET MVC - if you do decide to use ASP.NET MVC, then this tutorial shows you how to access the service from Silverlight. Essentially Tim is showing you how to access the particular REST service exposed by ASP.NET MVC, but the same techniques (WebClient, etc) can be used to talk to any REST service
Build your own WCF SOAP-based service which implements the MVC pattern. This link shows you how to build and access WCF SOAP-based services in Silverlight.
Build your own REST service which implements a MVC pattern. There is a universal way to comsume any REST service from Silverlight, which is described here. To build the rest service you can use whatever platform you choose. You may consider the WCF REST support that comes out-of-the-box in .Net 3.5, or the WCF REST Starter Kit, which builds on the out-of-the-box REST support in WCF to give you some extra features. Or you can consider any other REST service framework of your choosing.
If you are going to proceed with the technologies you are talking about then forget completely about the term REST. What these technologies allow is you to do is object remoting over HTTP with the HTTP verbs. There is nothing wrong with that, just be aware of what you are trying to achieve.
The more you read and understand about REST the more confused you will get while trying to use Silverlight 3, ADO.Net Data Services, WCF REST Starter kit. These are all fine technologies to achieve what they were designed to do. Unfortunately, you will not learn how to do REST properly from these tools.
If you really want to do REST in .Net then start looking at OpenRasta.