WCF RIA Services - Overview

This article is relevant to entity models that utilize the deprecated Visual Studio integration of Telerik Data Access. The current documentation of the Data Access framework is available here.

WCF RIA Services simplifies the development of n-tier solutions for Rich Internet Applications (RIA), such as Silverlight applications. A common problem when developing n-tier RIA solutions is to coordinate the application logic between the middle tier and the presentation tier. In order to create the best user experience, you want your RIA client to be aware of the application logic that resides on the server, but you do not want to develop and maintain the application logic on both the presentation tier and the middle tier. RIA Services solves this problem by providing framework components, tools, and services that make the application logic on the server available to the RIA client without requiring you to manually duplicate that programming logic. You can create a RIA client that is aware of the business rules and knows that the client is automatically updated with the latest middle tier logic every time when the solution is re-compiled.

For more advanced Silverlight demos, you could refer to the Telerik Data Access Samples Kit. It is an easy to use resource browser that includes various demos and relevant information for the developers. The samples are grouped by technology (ASP.NET, Silverlight, WPF, WCF, N-Tier, etc.) and can be filtered by programming language (C# or VB) and complexity (levels 100-400). The Telerik Data Access Samples Kit is intended for browsing the code samples offline, so it should be downloaded and installed separately from the Telerik Data Access product.

Samples Kit Demos

The Telerik Data Access Samples Kit includes the Sofia Car Rental - WCF RIA Services demo, which demonstrates the best practices recommended for using Silverlight and WCF RIA services.

The topics in this section are entirely dedicated to the integration of WCF RIA Services, Telerik Data Access and Silverlight 5 applications: