I decided to make a ADO.NET Entity Framework (EF) / Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) version of my tutorial: “RIATasks: A Simple Silverlight CRUD Example (using View Model and Rx Extensions)”. After doing so, I see that EF does not make much of a difference either way, but, while they have made great strides in easing deployment of WCF 4.0, major issues still remain.

ADO.NET Entity Framework EF could have been used without too much problem. It only took three minutes to convert the application from using Linq to SQL to EF. After using the wizard to create a .edmx file, I only had to make trivial changes to the Linq syntax. For example I changed this:

public string UpdateTask(Task objTask) { string strError = ""; RIATasksDBDataContext DB = new RIATasksDBDataContext(); try { var result = (from Tasks in DB.Tasks where...

Silverlight is different because it communicates with the website that launches it using asynchronous communication. Learning how to design applications this way can be a bit challenging.

This is my MEF rant. Let me say up front that I do not think that Microsoft is doing anything incorrectly. But I have had a chance to spend at least 10 hours working with MEF so I now feel that I am educated enough about it to post a good old fashion rant.

What Is MEF? The documentation for The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) describes its purpose as a tool that "...simplifies the creation of extensible applications". That is a very general statement. It's like describing nuclear physics as "the field of physics that studies the building blocks and interactions of atomic nuclei". In some ways MEF is as powerful to programming as nuclear physics...

Expression Blend DataStore - A Powerful Tool For Designers

Live example:

• Link: Expression Blend Number Guesser

Microsoft Expression Blend 4+ provides a tool called DataStore. It is a very powerful tool for Designers to create functionality in Expression Blend without writing any code. To demonstrate some of it's abilities, I created a number guessing program with no code.

Live Example: http://silverlight.adefwebserver.com/ODataAuthenticationSample/

So you want to use OData but you need to secure the data? There are a ton of ways to do this, but this covers a simple way using ASP.NET Forms Authentication.

This is part II to the previous Blog (http://openlightgroup.net/Blog/tabid/58/EntryId/98/OData-Simplified.aspx) where we looked a simple OData example. This time we will make a simple Silverlight application that talks to an oData service.

Note, for this tutorial, you will also need to download and install RX Extensions from: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee794896.aspx, and the Silverlight Toolkit from: http://silverlight.codeplex.com.

As with the last tutorial, we will not use a database, just a simple collection that we are creating programmatically. This will allow you to see just the oData parts.

First, open up the project, in Visual Studio 2010 (or higher), from the zip file at the bottom of this link.



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Will OData eliminate the need for standard web services? Here is a simple example of how OData works. This example does not use a database connection so that you can easily see just the OData parts...

Over the years I have created several DotNetNuke Silverlight File managers. Each one is actually different and handles a different scenario. What they all have in common, is that they use Silverlight to enable uploads of large files.

Here is the breakdown:

Silverlight FileUploader – This allows you to upload all the files into one directory. No matter how many instances of this module you place in your site, they will all show the files from the single location.

Personal File Upload – This module allows each user of your DotNetNuke website to have their own file structure. You can also indicate which role can use this module.

DotNetNuke Silverlight File Manager...

I just posted a DotNetNuke version of the Silverlight 4 Drag and Drop File manager covered in these CodeProject articles:

Silverlight View Model Style File Manager Silverlight View Model Style File Manager Drag and Drop Upload (part 2) This project uses the View Model Style pattern that allows for a complete separation between program and design. This allows a Designer...