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Asked: 2026-05-21T00:03:13+00:00

So, I’ve been using WCF Ria services for a few months now and I

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So, I’ve been using WCF Ria services for a few months now and I am wondering why would anyone use WCF basicHttp webservice over using WCF RIA Services?

Someone told me that RIA Services is not good for Enterprise Level Applications and I am wondering why?

W/out RIA it seems you have to write validation logic in 2 areas, client and server. Also, RIA handles roles and membership fairly easily.

How much extra work is involved if you want to use WCF basicHttp webservice? What is the benifit over using RIA? and.. Does anyone have any good examples of an enterprise level silverlight application using wcf basicHttp webservice?

Thanks!

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  1. Editorial Team

    The issues with WCF support in Silverlight relates to the limited subset of the .NET Framework embedded in the Silverlight plug-in as it’s essentially a scaled down version of the .NET Framework. As a result of the scaled down .NET runtime in the Silverlight plug-in, it does not have the same full support for WCF that you get from standard .NET projects. This was done to make the initial download of SL quick from a client perspective and increase time-to-market of SL as a product. Keep in mind that the SL plug-in has no dependency on an existing .NET framework being installed which is why Linux, Windows Phone 7, and OS X versions are on the market.

    As time has progressed they continue to add in-demand features in. For example, Silverlight 5 will support WS-Trust (see here for a complete list of new features in 5).

    I recommend you read this resource to see what you may miss out on by trying to call WCF Services from the client:

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc896571(v=vs.95).aspx

    Keep in mind you could very easily proxy out calls to more complex WCF services through RIA Services endpoints which are in effect calling the service directly from server-side.

    As for using standard WCF instead of RIA … there are advantages when your middle tier has multiple client types, though with RIA you could simply expose your endpoints out as SOAP 1.1 endpoints and require people to connect using that paradigm instead of WCF. You do not have to use RIA or nothing; you could mix and match to meet your requirements as you see fit. Personally I am big on just using RIA if at all possible.

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