Best way to connect Lightswitch and BizTalk via web service - wcf

I have a database that doing simple CRUD and connected via BizTalk Server 2010. Since Lightswitch is very simple and looks fits for that CRUD operation, I want to introduce Lightswitch for the operational staff here.
(I am not an expert in both technologies) the problem is, Lightswitch consumes WCF RIA Services. While BizTalk by default cannot expose such type of web services.
my question is :
what is the best type of web-service should I expose from BizTalk in order to be consumed by Lightswitch?

The easiest option is to throw a proxy service in between. You can take a BizTalk-generated WCF endpoint and wrap that service call with another service that exposes the DomainService that LightSwitch asks for.
For example, see this LightSwitch team blog post http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lightswitch/archive/2010/10/22/how-to-create-a-ria-service-wrapper-for-odata-source.aspx

Related

Calling ServiceStack Service from WCF

I work in a company that is only using WCF and i am trying to introduce service stack. Now i understand we are better off using the service stackclients that wcf clients but for some of our stuff and to keep people happy that will not always be possible. Can anyone provide a basic example of a ServiceStack service that can be added as a client into a VS2012 project using the add service reference inside visual studio as you normally do for a WCF service? Basically is there a way to make ServiceStack seem like a WCF service to people that don't know about ServiceStack?
If i can show this i think i can convince my company to make the switch but if not it will be difficult as everything else is WCF based. We are already using the ServiceStack clients to hook into other online websites so it seems a good time to try to convince them to move to the service stack services and clients as long as they feel they can fall back to the WCF client if needed.
Provided you adhere to the SOAP guidelines and limitations in ServiceStack you should be able to add a Service Reference by pointing the client to the ServiceStack wsdl at /soap12, e.g:
http://servicestackbaseurl/soap12
You can also find a link to the soap 1.1/1.2 wsdl (and XSDs) on ServiceStack's /metadata page.

Is it really worth using the WCF REST Service Application type in Visual Studio 2010?

In the past, I have created a "robust" WCF service that can accept a complex (consumption of the service in a project) or RESTful requests.
I'm creating a new service and wanted to ease the creation of the restful endpoints. So I see the WCF Rest Service Application, which I'm trying out.
The problem now, is that if I wanted to use this service from another .Net application, I would now have to go through the process of writing the completed event parsing/de-serialization.
I think in trying to over-simply the initial process, I will complicate the consumption process.
Are there any simpler ways around this, and is it best to stick to the main WCF service type and simply decorate the service contract methods appropriately.

WCF - Advice Required

I am starting a new webservice project which will be consumed by multiple consumer applications done in different technology like ASP, ASP.Net and PHP. I am planning to develop this service as a WCF service. I am new to WCF and I understand WCF is like umbrella tech which has all the features for developing a distributed SOA applications.
I would like to get your advice on whether my choice of opting WCF service over classic asmx service is correct. The consumer applications are existing application done different technologies as I said before. This service is a simple service that creates and updates user information in a centralized DB.
If my decision of choosing WCF is correct, then please let me know if there are any specific things I need to consider so that the existing application can consume my WCF service without any hiccups. In other words, I can provide a asmx service for this which they can consume directly without any issues (and currently they are consuming some of our asmx service. Since the current requirement is new I want it to be done with WCF). Likewise, the consumer should be able to consume my service like they consume asmx service.
I am asking this question because WCF provides additional features like security, etc. and hence the consumers should also follow the practice to communicate with the service.
Any advice is highly appreciated.
You probably want to use BasicHttpBinding in your WCF service and, although I'm not a PHP developer, I understand that PHP 5 has a SOAP library that can be used to create a service proxy based on the WSDL document exposed by the WCF service, assuming metadata exchange is enabled.

what is the role of wcf in silverlight applications?

i am new to the concept of silverlight and understood few things from this site.
i want to clear my doubt that what is the role of wcf ria services in silverlight applications?
what do we mean by domain services?
In Silverlight, you do not connect to a database directly - your Silverlight app runs on the client machine after all. The client-side UI (Silverlight) and the database / backend are strictly separated. The number of classes that the Silverlight runtime has to offer is (by design) quite limited, and things like direct database access are not amongst those classes available.
The way your SL app gets its data is through a WCF service (Domain service, or WCF Data Service) running on some server, which accesses the database on your behalf. This part usually runs on your web/app server and has access to your database or other backend servers.
The domain services are the one who gives you access to a remote repositories using WCF technology. That Silverlight compact .Net framework is on the clientside which needs to access services through cloud (internet) in able to interact data to the users.
You can start in http://www.silverlight.net
Happy reading!

Ria services replaces WCF services

We currently have a Silverlight 2.0 application communicating with a set of WCF web services. These services communicate with other WCF services for business logic.
Client DMZ Intranet
Silverlight -> WCF Web Service Gateway -> WCF Biz service -> DB
The WCF web service gateway resides within the DMZ.
We see that Ria services can replace our WCF web Service gateway, but this means that it will be installed in our DMZ and have access to our database... Is this secure?
We also seem to loose our business logic WCF services... I would need to put the business logic within Ria services (as it has connection to the database and holds the domain...).
What is the recommended patter for Ria services? Where does it fit?
What is the approach for companies that already invested in WCF web services? Can they use RIA?
We are looking at this alternative, were we would expose both web services and Ria...
Silverlight -> WCF web service - > WCF biz service -> DB
-> Ria services -> DB
Any comments? I also wonder if anyone is actually using Ria in production....
Your proposal architecture with the silverlight app calling
both WCF Services and Ria services sounds fair to me.
Suppose your DB has an Employee Entity.
I can get this approach up and running, but have some issues
Suppose "the WCF biz service" accesses and modifies Employee.
does it get this data from the database directly?
(if so, is the EntityFramework edmx model shared between "the WCF biz service" and ria?)
does it in turn uses the RIA layer, and thus the EmployeeRiaProxy?
..?
Suppose you want to use the Employee Entity on your "WCF biz service" operation contract
This should not be possible in a pure SOA architecture?
Use a pure DTO data contract style approach with an EmployeeDto?
Should you use the Employee, or the EmployeeRiaProxy?
Using the Employee is not possible because the silverlight app does not know it
(or would cause another EmployeeWCFProxy type being created on the client)
Using the EmployeeRiaProxy is possible, but ties your operation contract to a
Ria proxy (pretty poor design) and assumes the service uses RIA for data access
Or should everything pass through this RIA layer? from which you call "the WCF biz service" in turn then?
Any opinions welcome!
Koen