LINQ to XML and RIA Services?

Question

What is the difference between the two? Are they supposed to perform one and the same function - data binding? Or are they "apples and oranges" in comparison?

Answer 1

These are really different things. LINQ to XML is a way of trying to treat XML data as though it were relational, and querying on that data.

RIA services are a special type of WCF service that exposes data to tightly-coupled clients. They can have SOAP/binary, SOAP/XML, or JSON endpoints. You can think of RIA services as a "LINQ to web service", and though it will work with AJAX, it was really intended for a Silverlight client.