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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T04:08:29+00:00

I want to access a remote SQL database for my Silverlight client. I know

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I want to access a remote SQL database for my Silverlight client. I know that there are various ways to do this (Entity Framework model, Linq to SQL), but all of those rely on something in the web project (or, at least, all of the tutorials I’ve read do). What’s unusual for me is that there is no web project, which of course prevents me from using various assemblies.

The only thing I do have which might be useful is a WCF service running on IIS, which will have less limitations (and I can add that as a service reference in my SL project). But I’m not even sure if this is a feasible option for this problem.

Any solutions or suggestions would be great.

Thanks.

Edit: Thanks for the suggestions guys, but here’s a little more: I am making an individual XAP that is loaded into something else (someone else’s project is importing and loading the XAP files), so I don’t have access to the web component. The loader itself will be hosted within a website (at least, I assume it will be).

I already have a WCF service set up which is currently hosted in IIS, so I can potentially create something here. How? Well, it seems I can generate the ORM classes using SQLMetal.exe, and then import that code into the WCF service. This will allow the service to make calls to the remote database and have that data returned in C# classes. The perhaps I’ll make those data classes as ServiceContracts and pass the data that way. What’s the problem here? Well, to be honest, I’m not really sure how it would work. I mean, I call the WCF Service from the SL application, which does its thing. It then must contact the SL application (I have no idea how to do that part) and send along a load of data. It would be great if someone had has experience of this and would offer some suggestions. I know it’s not really how you’re supposed to do it, but I’ve drawn the short straw so I’m stuck with it.

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  1. Editorial Team

    First, I would recommend you use WPF instead of Silverlight for this project. If you’re not using this as a web client, then WPF is a million times easier / better.

    But if that’s not a possibility:

    You can write a self-hosted WCF service and run it somewhere accessible. Self-hosted will allow for WCF connections to connect without the IIS necessary. In your self-hosted program you need:

    1. Front end WCF defined
    2. Back end SQL database
    3. Depending on how smart this client needs to be, a BusinessLogic layer to transform the data from WCF to SQL.
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