Silverlight™ 4 For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Using WCF Data Services to Store and Manage Data

In This Chapter

• Getting started with WCF Data Services

• Using WCF Data Services in a Silverlight application

• Tracking and saving changes

• Handling data concurrency

• How to use query and change interceptors

• Controlling access to entity sets

This part of the book is, of course, all about connecting your Web site with the data you need to access for it, and this chapter shows you how to access data over the Internet from your Silverlight application using one of two types of Web services discussed in this part. In this chapter, that service uses The Software Formerly Known as Astoria — which now goes by the name of WCF Data Services — for data access. (The next two chapters delve into using WCF RIA Services, thereby introducing you to the next generation of data access from a Rich Internet Application [RIA]). You can use both services together, too, so you'll find it helpful to get comfortable with this chapter's material before you go on to the rest of this part.

WCF Data Services and WCF RIA Services are both free downloads from Microsoft that you need to install on the machine you use for application development. The version of WCF Data Services that this chapter is based on is the 1.5 Community Technical Preview (CTP). Microsoft releases tools such as this into the community before final release so that the company can gather community feedback from early adopters before the final product is released. The main reason for using the ...