Using Wcf Web Service With Silverlight Applications

By Author: Mark Royson
Total Articles: 136
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WCF [Windows Communication Foundation] provides an exceptional framework for exchanging data across the network boundaries. WCF data services is a part of .NET framework and it exchanges data using standards based web service specifications like SOAP, WSDL and WS-I standards.

Silverlight includes a WCF Data Services client library which enables developers to access data from any service that exposes an Open Data Protocol [OData] feed. OData enables to access data in the style of representational state transfer [REST] resources.

WCF has three basic building blocks – A, B, and C which stands for Address, Binding and Contract. The Address block defines the URL of the service that a client uses to talk with it. The Binding part defines the protocols to be used while talking with the service. WCF supports several different protocols like HTTP, TCP and more. And lastly, the Contract block defines the service's API including the data it can send and receive. It includes service operation names, data types used and some more additional details.

Silverlight ...
... applications need to access some data or functionality frequently on the back-end server. WCF plays a key role in Silverlight applications that requires access to manipulate the data. WCF Data services supports the full set of OData functionality for the purpose of discovering, querying, and updating the data in a data service. The Silverlight tools available for Visual Studio 2010 includes a Silverlight enabled WCF service project template which can be utilized to create service classes. This template configures the service to use binary message encoding combined with the HTTP protocol that helps to deliver high performance. A WCF service created can be directly called from the Silverlight application by using a proxy object. This proxy object is used for directly communicating with the service from the silverlight client and it is directly built in Visual Studio.

WCF web services uses OData protocol for addressing or manipulating the resources. And so, it is possible to access these services from any client that supports OData. It can collect data that originates from various sources as OData feeds. OData based services can be build easily by using ADO.NET Entity Framework data model and also OData feeds can be created easily based on CLR classes. A set of client libraries are also integrated in WCF web services – one for .NET framework client applications and other one especially for Silverlight based applications.

WCF offers major benefits when there occurs changes in the communication needs. Softweb Solutions offers customized and on-time WCF Development services. We also have a highly skilled and qualified Silverlight design and development team that ensures Silverlight applications to be cross-browser and cross-platform compatible.
Contact us at info@softwebsolutions.com for more information on our services or if you are looking for professionals who expertise in building Windows User Interface and rapid service oriented apps.