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About 2 years ago, in the spring of 2010, Microsoft released Silverlight 4. Silverlight 4 proved
to be a platform ready for Line-of-Business application development. Numerous developers
learned how to build great apps with it, which can run both within the browser and as a
stand-alone application on the user's machine. Silverlight 5 was the logical successor and
extended the platform again with an extensive list of new features.
Soon after the launch of the Silverlight 4, the first edition of this book was released. Its
success convinced us to write an updated version that focuses on Silverlight 5. While all
existing content is updated to match the new version, a lot of new content is added. This can
be found in recipes covering Silverlight 5-specific features as well as complete new chapters,
covering other aspects of working with data such as MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel) or even
from Windows Phone 7.
In this practical cookbook, you'll learn how to build data-rich business applications with
Silverlight that draw on multiple sources of data. Although the book focuses on Silverlight 5,
many of the recipes will work on Silverlight 4 projects as well. A large number will also work in
Silverlight 3. This is indicated for each recipe.
Packed with reusable, real-world recipes, the book begins by introducing you to general
principles for programming Silverlight. It then dives deep into the world of data services,
covering all the options available to access data and communicate with services to make the
most out of data in your Silverlight business applications, whilst at the same time providing
a rich user experience. Chapters cover data binding, data controls, concepts of talking to
services, communicating with WCF, ASMX, REST services, and much more. The chapter on
accessing data and services from Windows Phone 7 applications discusses how to leverage
your knowledge on the mobile platform.
By following the practical recipes in this book, which are of varying difficulty levels, you
will learn concepts for creating data-rich business applications—from the creation of a
Silverlight application, to displaying data in the Silverlight application and upgrading your
existing applications to use Silverlight. Each recipe will cover a data services topic, starting
from the description of the problem, covering a conceptual solution and a solution containing
sample code. |