Silverlight data-driven application with NHibernate

Question

Hi Guys, this is more of a subjective Question, but I'll ask it anyway.

I'm about to develop a very data-centric application that has to run inside the browser. The frontend will be Silverlight, backed by a Fluent NHibernate service that runs server side.

The problem here is: Wherever I look for data-driven silverlight app I wind up finding Silverlight RIA services examples, but nothing on how to build this without some ADO.NET stuff involved.

I have little to no knowledge in WCF so far, but from the limited research I did it seems like WCF is pretty much the only way to let the client talk to the server.

Are there any tutorials/best practices on how to write a Silverlight MVVM app that provides CRUD for a non-EF database?

Suggestions would be very much appreciated. Thanks

PS: I can't use .NET remoting. The backend has to run on IIS6 :(

Answer 1

If you only need CRUD why not try REST via WCF

Otherwise create just a regular wcf. Walkthrough: Creating and Accessing WCF Services

Answer 2

There's a great series of posts from Brad A about using RIA Services at Business Apps Example for Silverlight 3 RTM and .NET RIA Services July Update Summary.

Some of these will be out of date, but it does cover using RIA Services from a collection of different data sources.