RIA Services RC and Toolkit March 2010 now available…

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The RIA Services team just released the RC version of the product. You can find all the installation instruction @ https://silverlight.net/RIAServices.

I am going to talk about the features have been added to this release and also introduce you to the RIA Services Toolkit.

You can download the RIA Services Toolkit here.

New Features added in the RC Release

We have added some great features since the PDC 09 release. We have heard all the feedback and tried to address some of the important ones. The list is taken from Dinesh’s forum post. Trust me there have been a lot more additions than the one listed below. I will follow up with more posts or updated links for each feature.

 

  1. INDEI Support:- Validation support based on Silverlight 4’s INotifyDataErrorInfo. This is a non-exception-based model and enables async validations more easily. It also helps display errors flagged by the server in the UI.

  2. Spiffier DDS: filter/sort/group descriptors support binding; ICommand support for Load/SubmitChanges/RejectChanges

  3. Server throttling: you can regulate the per request load on the server / DB by specifying maximum result limit on a query method using the QueryAttribute.ResultLimit property.

  4. AuthorizationContext: Similar to ValidationContext, now you have more options for implementing custom authorization rules (e.g. entity-based authorization)

  5. Endpoint configuration support: Following the “secure by default” principle, only binary endpoint will be exposed but we have made it really easy to add additional/different endpoints if you plan to use them.

  6. OData endpoint: you can point PowerPivot to a DomainService OData endpoint and analyze data by calling the appropriate query method. This is the first step in lighting up OData with RIA Services.

Along with these features in the main product, we are also announcing the availability of new package called the RIA Services Toolkit

What is the Toolkit? What does it contain?

The WCF RIA Services Toolkit is a collection forward looking features made available outside the normal RIA Services release cycle. A product of the WCF RIA Services product team, the Toolkit adds new functionality quickly for developers and provides the community an efficient way to help shape product development by contributing ideas and bug reports.

The following functionality are available in this release of the Toolkit:

  1. LinqToSql DomainService
  2. Soap endpoint - This enables you to expose a soap endpoint for your DomainService
  3. JSON endpoint - This enables you to expose a JSON endpoint for your DomainService
  4. ASP.net DomainDataSource - This control will enable you to create an ASP.net application that can talk to your DomainService.
  5. ASP.net  Dynamic Data Domain Service – We have added a new project template for this.

 

You can find the breaking changes document here.

There is quite a bit to play with here and we would love to hear your feedback. You can reach to us at https://forums.silverlight.net/forums/53.aspx

Cheers!!