Silverlight 4 with WCF RIA architecture applying DDD

Question

Hello,

In my ASP.NET MVC applications I use DDD and it works very well. I'm new to Silverlight development and would like to know how could I apply DDD to build a new architecture. I had a look on WCF RIA Services and what is exposed by default it's the simple CRUD methods. I would like to use MVVM pattern.

I thought about general architecture and don't know if what I'm thinking about make sense in Silverlight development.

I thought about creating Domain Model on the top of SVC. I would than expose by WCF RIA some operation that deals with aggreates in my Domain Model instead of simple CRUD. What I would aloso expose is the ViewModel entieties that could be used by the view.

I don't know if it's make sense, if I'm going in a good direction or if applying DDD in Silverlight 4 development is a good practice. I didn't find much informations on Internet.

I'll appreciate if you could point me to some interesting links or if you can give me some hints.

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

I took a look at RIA during a Silverlight 3 prototype. I was initially excited, but ultimately ditched it. I, too, was using DDD on the server-side. I felt like RIA was very data-oriented and CRUD-oriented which, in my opinion, flies in the face of domain-oriented methods and operations. While it does seem possible to make your own custom methods to expose on your RIA Domain Services (I hate that they called them "domain services" -- again in conflict with DDD), I felt like I was carrying a lot of RIA baggage for very little benefit once I ditched their default CRUD/query support.