This comprehensive book teaches you how to build data-rich business applications with Silverlight 2 that draw on multiple sources of data. Packed with reusable examples, Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 covers all of the data access and web service tools you need, including data binding, the LINQ data querying component, RESTful and SOAP web service support, cross-domain web service calls, and Microsoft's new ADO.NET Data Services and the ADO.NET Entity Framework. With this book, you will:

• Know when and how to use LINQ to JSON, LINQ to XML, and LINQ to Objects

• Learn how Silverlight 2 applications bind, pass, read, save, query, and present data

• Discover how your application can call web services to work with SOAP, REST, RSS, AtomPub, POX and JSON

• Design REST, ASMX, and WCF web services that communicate with Silverlight 2

• Harness RESTful web services such as Digg, Amazon, and Twitter

• Retrieve and save data using the new Entity Framework and WCF

• Work with RESTful ADO.NET Data Services and its Silverlight client library to move data between your Silverlight application and a database

Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2 offers many tips and tricks for building data-rich business applications, and covers the scenarios you're most likely to encounter. Complete examples in C# and VB can be downloaded from the book's companion website.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 19 Ratings

Repetitive - where were the editors? - 2009-04-01
Reviewer Rating:
The book may be the best available at this time and I appreciate it exists already. But I could have waited another week or two to have it cleaned up. It looks like the author never took the time to plan where he would introduce concepts and hence ended up introducing them repeatedly. Or do authors get paid by the page? For instance, the concept that a DataContext for a control can be specified at every level in the control hierarchy above (and including) this control is mentioned SIX times (pages 27, 28, 36 (twice), 37, and 38). Explaining INotifyPropertyChanged and Binding Modes is important, but does it really need 21 pages to cover them? Do we really need an example with 10 properties (both in C# and VB) to get it? Couldn't the XAML (page 51) at least be clean? On page 101 he writes (no kidding!)

"This window will search for any service that exposes Web Services Description Language (WSDL), which makes it discoverable. Both WCF web services and ASMX web services support SOAP 1.1 and are discoverable, so you can find them through this window. You can add as a service reference from a Silverlight 2 application any SOAP service that is discoverable and supports the basic profile of SOAP 1.1. Discoverable services are those that support WSDL. These include both WCF services and ASMX services"

John Papa's articles in MSDN Magazine are of much higher quality.
So I definitely do not agree with others who claim this book is very well written. When I read the same thing over and over again I feel I am listening to a poorly prepared presentation, taking too much of my time. Hopefully next time the editors (are allowed to) play their role. The subject deserves it.

Best resource I've found so far - 2009-04-16
Reviewer Rating:
This book comprehensivley covers all of the important topics required for constructing SilverLight apps that are interacting with different data sources through WCF or REST. It provides very detailed information on the different techniques available. It includes a great chapter on using ADO.Net Data Services, including how to use the Entity Framework. Most developers will pick one particular data integration architecture and stick with it, this book will certainly help architects to make the correct decision and answer their questions regarding the different alternatives. A valuable resource.

excellent silverlight reference - 2009-04-13
Reviewer Rating:
My favorite parts of this book include data binding and ado.net
data services. I did wish that john covered asp.net ajax a bit deeper
and went into sql custom domain modeling. John papa writes for msdn
magazine and his books and articles are a pleasure to read....

Essential for any Silverlight 2 developer - 2009-04-06
Reviewer Rating:
Developers and businesses alike are starting to see the benefits of Silverlight 2 and more and more are starting to take advantage of it's capabilities. Most web-developers have a good knowledge of Microsoft's .Net platform, they also have good knowledge of HTML, CSS and all the other technologies surrounding the web. However presentation fairly much still is lacking on the web front, even with the acceptance of AJAX, it's still like an amateurs representation of the Mona Lisa compared with the desktop cousins. The first version of Silverlight was mainly geared towards video and audio and was restricted to the Javascript language. With the introduction of Silverlight 2, you now have pre-built controls at your disposal, C# and VB.Net programming access and a whole lot more. The painting has now gone from being amateurish to professional but still not quite the original. Now however developers can re-use their existing .Net Framework knowledge without having to learn another language like Flash and have a rich user experience. One thing that you will definitely need is data. Data is king in any application and gaining access to your data is what this book is all about.

Silverlight 2 introduced various ways in which you can gain access to your data, through RESTful web services, SOAP, RSS, AtomPub, POX, JSON, direct from a backend database etc. etc. You can write your own data layers or bind directly to controls and can even use LINQ.

John Papa takes you by the hand and shows you how to do all of the above scenarios and more. The book is very well written, easy to read and understand and no filler (something I'm really disliking about certain books, putting filler in just to increase page count).

There are whole chapters dedicated to each of the main ways to gain access to your data and bind it to your front end application with numerous examples throughout including how to read Tweets, access and consume Amazon RESTful services, the ADO.Net Entity Framework etc. If there is a way to access data you will find out how to incorporate that into your Silverlight 2 application with this book. And of course, you can also take the techniques John has so masterfully expounded on in this book and use them in your standard ASP.Net web sites as well.

If you're a Silverlight developer, this is one of those must have books. You'll refer to it over and over. Even if you're a standard ASP.Net developer it is worth taking a look through this book as most of the content can very easily be applied to a normal ASP.Net site.

.NET Developer Group Coban - 2009-07-19
Reviewer Rating:
Este libro es muy util ya que pienso que Silverlight es mucho mejor que Flash, ademas el libro lo presenta de forma sencilla.

By: Oscar Garcia

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