1.7. Consuming Data

Nearly all useful web applications rely on retrieving, displaying, and manipulating data. Whatever we set out to accomplish in software development, the road to achieving our vision invariably crosses the demands of data. After this section, you will understand how Silverlight 2 communicates with the world to obtain data and with your server to persist changes to that data in order to perform useful functions for your users.

1.7.1. Obtaining Data from Application Resources

A straightforward way to obtain data for your application is to provide it yourself, directly within the XAP deployment delivered to your user. Obviously this is not ultimately useful for an application you expect to change over time, but it is helpful for static applications that require a defined set of data that is manipulated in response to a user's actions. You learned how to do this in code in the "Working with Application Resources" section.