WCF Data Services vs WCF RIA Services
Jul 28, 2010
To sum up my findings as to the differences between WCF Data Services vs WCF RIA Services.
Hope this will help you!
| WCF (ADO.NET) Data Services | WCF (.NET) RIA Services |
|---|---|
| Expose data model as RESTful web service | Prescriptive approach to n-tier app development |
| Cross platform interoperation as a goal - “Unlock data silos” - Out-of-box support from future MS products such as SQL2008 R2, Azure, Excel 2010, SharePoint 2010 | Designed specifically for end-to-end Silverlight & ASP.NET solutions - Some technology proprietary to Silverlight (no WPF support) - Use ASP.NET Authentication/Roles across SL and ASP.NET - ASP.NET/AJAX can also access service layer |
| Loosely coupled clients and servers | Client & server are designed and deployed together |
| Service layer exposes “raw” data sources | Opportunity to easily add business logic into service layer - Encourage “domain” concepts - Strong validation framework - Offline / Sync enabled |
| Service can be consumed from .NET, Silverlight, AJAX, PHP and Java (libraries available) | Service can be consumed easily from SL, AJAX, WebForms |
| Service’s data source must: - Expose at least one IQueryable property - Implement IUpdateable if you desire updates | Service exposes domain objects via convention: - IQueryable GetX - UpdateX/InsertX/DeleteX |
| No design time experience yet (??) | Design time experience with data sources, drag drop etc |
| - OData for all clients - Within OData, multiple formats supported (JSON, XML etc) | - SOAP (binary) for SL clients - JSON for AJAX clients - SOAP (XML) for other clients |
| Discoverable (?) | Non-discoverable |
| Hosted as WCF Service (.svc) | Old version hosted in custom web handler (.axd). New version is WCF service. |
| Standardized on OData protocol | Will “support” OData |
| More mature – public for at least 2 years, formerly “Project Astoria” | Less mature – public for 6 months |
Common features
- Based on WCF
- Use a RESTful architecture
- Can be used to expose any data source (sql, xml, poco/objects etc.)
- Client side libraries provide ability to query using LINQ
General
- Currently they do not share much (any?) technology / code
- RIA Services is not based on top of Data Services
- RIA Services & Data Services will “align”
- OData eventually pushed down into WCF stack
Hope this will help you!
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