WCF Ria Services vs WCF Services

WCF RIA Services

Pro’s:

• Service can be consumed easily from Silverlight, AJAX, and WebForms. (Not winforms(??))
• Non-discoverable.
• Richer client side object model by including business rules and relationships between objects.
• Quicker to set up. Good for Rapid development.
• More control over what is exposed. Uses a set Interface.
• Integrated change tracking by default.
• Can monitor changes in client and batch the changes to the server.
• Uses reflection at design time to see objects (doesn’t use service contracts)
• Creates client code in Silverlight.
• Design time experience with data sources, drag drop etc. (Contains these features)
• Shares validation logic in client.
• Can use a set interface. Also provides Context object in client.
• Can support Linq queries between client and server but these are based on Interface.
• Examples:
• GetGamesByIdQuery(1);
• Var qry = GetGamesQuery().Where(g =>; g.Price < 50)
  LoadOperation op = cnt.Load(qry);

Con’s:

• Harder to Customize than WCF Services
• No message-level security
• Serialization is not well supported (has limitations)
• Gives up flexibility compared to WCF
• Harder to debug.
• Not easy to integrate with large enterprise applications
• More tightly coupled than WCF Services.

WCF Services

Pro’s:

• Standardized on OData protocol
• Loosely coupled clients and servers
• Service can be consumed from .NET, Silverlight, AJAX, PHP and Java (libraries available).
• Cross platform interoperability as a goal: Out-of-box support from future MS products such as SQL2008 R2, Azure, Excel 2010, SharePoint 2010, etc.
• RESTful
• Discoverable
• Uses JSON and ATOM (xml-based feed format)
• Can interact WCF service using standard HTTP verbs such as GET/POST/DELETE
• Uses Entity data modeling (EDM), entity-relationship derivative
• Non-relational sources can be represented using EDM exposed as data service.
• Support for Membership => activate membership endpoint.
• Allows you to add operations to fill custom operations.
• Includes Data Context class to monitor changes, issue changes in batches with transactional support.
• Queryable end-points (not a set interface).
• Flexible querying, paging association traversal.
• Supports Linq queries between client and server. Client can create Linq query and run it on server.
• Example:
  var qry from g in ds.Games WHERE Id == 1
  select g
  Qry.BeginExecute();
• Code written on client is small (Linq calls and context class work)

 Con’s:

• Does not give tight control over Interface to data access