Book Summary for Data Driven Services with Silverlight 2: on Amazon Now!

My Data Services with Silverlight 2 book is now available for pre-order on Amazon! Since it was posted I realized that now is a good time to update my book summary and answer some common questions that I have received about what topics will be addressed in my book. So this should help give a better understanding of the topic I am covering.

Style of the Book?: The style of the book is a tell and show style. First I discuss a concept, what it is, how it works, why you care, and then I show how it works. For example I discuss RESTful services (and some not so RESTful), show examples, explain their characteristics, demonstrate how to invoke them using different classes from Silverlight 2,  how to consume their responses, how to debug them, and so on. Notice the focus on the “how to” and “demonstrate” words … I tried very hard to make this a book that will help someone get off the ground and build applications with functional demo code.

VB or C#?: Oh, and I have had several questions about C# and VB code … so yes, all code examples in my book are in both C# and VB, including all downloadable source code for the book. The source will be available on  my site in a section dedicated to the book (not yet created). If you want to bookmark it now it will be www.silverlight2data.com .

Where is John?: I’ll be out and about a lot this Fall at various events presenting Silverlight topics. You can check out my Events page to see the current confirmed list. I have some more events I am adding for the Fall … so keep an eye on the Events page or my main feed for updates.

Data Services with Silverlight 2

By John Papa

O’Reilly Publishing

Publish Date: December 2008

Book Summary

There is tremendous interest in building applications with data centric Silverlight 2 that interact with data driven services. Addressing this interest, Data Services with Silverlight 2 demonstrates how to build Silverlight 2 applications using the XAML based data binding techniques with the control suite included in Silverlight 2. The first section of this book explores the importance of data binding modes and the DataContext, binding notifications, value converters, and binding to list based sources. The second section dives into communications with SOAP based ASMX and WCF web services, dealing with cross domain issues, consuming custom entities as well as entities from tools such as LINQ to SQL, and communication with services that do not describe themselves. As RESTful web service are growing in number and popularity, this book demonstrates how to consume various types of RESTful services using WebClient and HttpWebRequest with both HTTP GET and POST verbs. Sometimes it is valuable to design custom RESTful web services. This book demonstrates how WCF can be used to design RESTful services that can be consumed by Silverlight 2 applications. The final chapters wrap up with some tips and tricks, demonstrating how to consume RSS services, and integrating the ADO.NET Data Services (code-named Astoria) with Silverlight 2 applications.

The book assumes a basic knowledge of Silverlight and XAML, and builds on those foundations showing how to develop robust data service driven applications.

Main Topics of Data Services with Silverlight 2

· Getting Started with Silverlight 2 Data and Services

· Foundations in Silverlight 2’ XAML Based Data Binding

· Binding Modes and Notifications

· Value Converters, Binding to Lists and DataTemplates

· Consuming SOAP Services from Silverlight 2 Using ASMX and WCF

· Passing Entities via WCF: POCO, LINQ to SQL, Entity Framework

· Working with Cross Domain Policies

· Debugging Tips with Fiddler and WebDevelopmentHelper

· Consuming RESTful Services with WebClient and HttpWebRequest from Silverlight 2

· Designing RESTful Services to be Consumed by Silverlight 2

· Managing XML and JSON Responses in Silverlight 2 with LINQ to XML and LINQ to JSON

· Receiving and Morphing RSS Feed Data with Silverlight 2

· Communicating with ADO.NET Data Services via Silverlight 2

UPDATE 1: As a side note, a great companion book to mine is Programming Silverlight 2 by Tim Heuer and Jesse Liberty. These guys know their stuff and have created what I think will be the defacto Silverlight 2 book. Theirs covers a greater breadth of Silverlight than mine, while my book zooms in on the details and implementation of data and services with Silverlight 2. They make a good bundle :-)

UPDATE 2: Additional Notes from Readers:

Will this be an eBook?: I am not sure if my book will be an eBook or not. I will ask the publisher, O’Reilly.

Will this book be in Rough Cuts?: No, this book will not be in “rough cuts”