Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2

Summary

Silverlight 2 clients can call any discoverable web services using ASMX web services and WCF web services, as shown in this chapter. Although Silverlight can also call services that do not describe themselves, such as REST services, self-describing services such as WCF services are beneficial because they can tell the client application exactly how they should be called and what type of data they will return (if any). In the next chapter, we will review how to create WCF services that send and receive complex data using domain model entities.

It is critical to remember that cross-domain calls are restricted unless the target server allows the client’s domain access to the target server’s services. Using a tool such as Fiddler2, Firebug, or Web Development Helper can make the debugging process much simpler.