Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2

Silverlight and the Entity Framework

As shown in the previous section, it is easy to consume domain entity models generated or created from an ORM such as LINQ to SQL. The ADO.NET Entity Framework is a far more powerful tool that LINQ to SQL, and it can easily create a domain entity model that is mapped to a database. The Entity Framework can easily create a domain entity model that is mapped to a database. The entities can be serialized, including full object graph serialization, using WCF and the DataContractSerializer. This section will demonstrate how to use the Entity Framework as it pertains directly to communications with WCF and Silverlight.

The EFClient sample application included in this chapter’s code contains a Silverlight client application that communicates with a WCF web service that returns and accepts Entity Framework entities. The setup of this example solution is similar to the previous ones in this chapter; the only difference is that an Entity Framework model must be created.

Creating the Entity Framework Model

The WCF web services are served from the Cassini web server hosting the NWEFService web application. Figure 6-8 shows the creation of the NWModel.edmx file in the NWEFService web application. When this file is created the designer opens and a wizard dialog window appears that walks you through the process of creating the initial state of the Entity Framework model.

Figure 6-8. Creating an Entity Framework model EDMX file

You can generate the model from an ...