ASP.NET together with WCF RIA Services or WCF Data Services

Question

Makes it sense to use ASP.NET applications together with WCF RIA Services or WCF Data Services (to encapsulate the data access layer) ? Or are these technolgies only useful for Silverlight applications.

Answer 1

The idea behind RIA services is that you would be able to use them to create applications using a number of different client side technologies, such as Silverlight, ASP.NET, WinForms, Mobile, etc. So, RIA services is definitely not just useful for Silverlight applications, though it is especially useful in that scenario since the tools to build them in visual studio are strong.

The choice of whether or not to use it for an application, in my opinion, would be driven by the type of application and the future architectural need for a RIA services-based design. If you see a need in the future to offer multiple different experiences for your application (Web, Silverlight, Mobile), then RIA services might be the way to go. RIA services can choose to to utilize WCF, so it plays well in a service oriented application scenario too. You will have to weigh that with the extra time to set it up and the learning curve for developers compared to the more traditional ASP.NET application model.