Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 (Paperback)

by John Papa (Author)
Key Phrases: managing lists, syndication feed, width units, Data Services, Private Sub, End Get Set (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
This comprehensive book teaches you how to build data-rich business applications with Silverlight 2 that draw on multiple sources of data. Packed with reusable examples, Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 covers all of the data access and web service tools you need, including data binding, the LINQ data querying component, RESTful and SOAP web service calls, and Microsoft's new ADO.NET Data Services and the ADO.NET Framework. With this book, you will:

• Know when and how to use LINQ to JSON, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to Objects
  
• Learn how Silverlight 2 applications bind, pass, read, save, query and present data
  
• Discover how your application can call web services to work with SOAP, REST, RSS, AtomPub, POX and JSON Design REST, ASMX, and WCF web services that communicate with Silverlight 2
• Harness RESTful web services such as Digg, Amazon and Twitter
• Retrieve and save data using the new Entity Framework and WCF
• Work with RESTful ADO.NET Data Services and its Silverlight client library to move data between your Silverlight application and database

Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 offers many tips and tricks for building data-rich business applications, and covers the scenarios you're most likely to encounter. Complete examples in C# and VB can be downloaded from the books companion website.

About the Author
John Papa is a Microsoft C# MVP, MCSD.NET, and INETA Speaker who has been working with Microsoft distributed architectures for over 10 years. He has enterprise experience architecting and developing with .NET technologies focusing on architecture, patterns and practices, data access and mobile development. John has authored or co-authored several books on data access technologies, is the author of the "Data Points" column in MSDN Magazine, has presented MSDN WebCasts and can often be found speaking at industry conferences such as DevConnections and VSLive.

Product Details

• Paperback: 366 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1st edition (January 2, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596523092
• ISBN-13: 978-0596523091
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #47,161 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well-written with easy to follow examples but lacks discussion of potential gotchas, December 25, 2008

By	Techie Evan - See all my reviews

While many initial books on Silverlight tended to highlight the ease with which one can create great looking animations and user interfaces, this book is focused entirely on tools and techniques for building and debugging data-bound applications with Silverlight 2 as the client. The first four chapters discuss in great detail various data binding concepts and how Silverlight 2's offerings are more limited than those available with WPF. Chapters 5 and 6 are devoted to discussions of building and consuming ASMX and SOAP-based WCF services, cross-domain policies, and new data serialization features available in .Net 3.5 SP 1; one key learning from these chapters is that Silverlight 2 only supports basicHttpBinding for SOAP-based WCF Services. The next three chapters explain how REST-based Services differ from SOAP-based Services, how to build REST-based WCF Services, and how to consume such services as well as RESTful Services available from Digg, Amazon, and Twitter using the WebClient class (a scaled down version of the full .Net version) included in the Silverlight 2 plug-in. Those chapters demonstrate how to issue GET and POST RESTful requests but only briefly describe the availability of workarounds for issuing PUT and DELETE Restful requests with no further pointers or sample code. The same chapters include demonstrations of how to consume responses formatted in XML or JSON using LINQ to XML and LINQ to JSON, respectively. The next chapter provides information on how to interact with Syndication Feeds, and the last chapter is a lengthy excellent discussion of how to use ADO.Net Data Services. Appendix A provides a Quick Reference on ADO.Net Data Services and Appendix B discusses a few HTTP Sniffing Tools that can be used for debugging Silverlight 2 applications. All code samples are in C# and VB, and can be downloaded from silverlight-data.com. Overall, I thought the book is very well-written, the code samples are easy to follow, but almost all of them only deal with happy path scenarios, with very little discussion of potential gotchas and how to deal with such potential problems.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Repetitive - where were the editors?, April 1, 2009

By	Marcus F. Schluper "marc.schluper" (Beaverton, OR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book may be the best available at this time and I appreciate it exists already. But I could have waited another week or two to have it cleaned up. It looks like the author never took the time to plan where he would introduce concepts and hence ended up introducing them repeatedly. Or do authors get paid by the page? For instance, the concept that a DataContext for a control can be specified at every level in the control hierarchy above (and including) this control is mentioned SIX times (pages 27, 28, 36 (twice), 37, and 38). Explaining INotifyPropertyChanged and Binding Modes is important, but does it really need 21 pages to cover them? Do we really need an example with 10 properties (both in C# and VB) to get it? Couldn't the XAML (page 51) at least be clean? On page 101 he writes (no kidding!)

"This window will search for any service that exposes Web Services Description Language (WSDL), which makes it discoverable. Both WCF web services and ASMX web services support SOAP 1.1 and are discoverable, so you can find them through this window. You can add as a service reference from a Silverlight 2 application any SOAP service that is discoverable and supports the basic profile of SOAP 1.1. Discoverable services are those that support WSDL. These include both WCF services and ASMX services"

John Papa's articles in MSDN Magazine are of much higher quality.
So I definitely do not agree with others who claim this book is very well written. When I read the same thing over and over again I feel I am listening to a poorly prepared presentation, taking too much of my time. Hopefully next time the editors (are allowed to) play their role. The subject deserves it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Best resource I've found so far, April 16, 2009

By	Neil Kimber "www.talentquest.com" (Atlanta, GA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book comprehensivley covers all of the important topics required for constructing SilverLight apps that are interacting with different data sources through WCF or REST. It provides very detailed information on the different techniques available. It includes a great chapter on using ADO.Net Data Services, including how to use the Entity Framework. Most developers will pick one particular data integration architecture and stick with it, this book will certainly help architects to make the correct decision and answer their questions regarding the different alternatives. A valuable resource.