Is calling the SharePoint Web Services from a Silverlight application secure?

Question

In a public internet scenario, is it possible to call the SharePoint Web Services from within a Silverlight application (hosted in the same site)? Is this secure?

The SharePoint site is a public-facing one.

Answer 1

Yes it is possible. Assuming the Silverlight app is loaded from the same host as the Sharepoint site, you should be able to just create a Service Reference to the Sharepoint Web Services.

If it is not the same host, you will have to create a clientaccesspolicy.xml file (google it) and deploy it to your Sharepoint site in order allow your Silverlight app to access the Sharepoint Web Services.

Credentials ought to flow through, as the default is for SL to use the Browser's network stack - and the browser ought to have already authenticated to Sharepoint. If that is not the case, then you will have some work to do in that regard.

As far as it being secure - well that depends on what you mean by secure. It will be as secure as someone accessing the Sharepoint site with a browser. To make it truly secure you would have to put the site behind SSL, and access the Web Services through SSL.