Chapter 5. Exposing Data from the Server: Using WCF RIA Services

By their very nature, business applications are highly data-centric applications. Therefore, one of the primary concerns you will have when designing your application is to how it will consume data from a server.

If you're used to writing applications that communicate directly with a database (such as SQL Server), you may be surprised to find that there is no object in Silverlight to enable you to do so (SqlConnection, OdbcConnection, etc.). This is because Silverlight is a client platform, designed to be run from within a browser anywhere in the world, and thus it does not make sense for it to be able to access databases directly (as databases are generally hidden behind a firewall). ...

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