There a lot of different ways a Silverlight application can connect back to it’ server. Including
- WCF - Windows Communication Foundation
- REST (see also)
- ADO.NET Data Services (or is this just REST?)
- POX - Plain Old XML (E.g basic xml)
- RIA services
For each of these please say what it’s for and when you would or wouldn’t use it. I am not looking for a great level of details just a set of “rules of thumb” for choosing between them.
(The problem is when designing your first Silverlight application knowing what to use when you don’t have time to learn all of them.)
If I was to replace Silverlight with WPF in this question what effect would it have on your answers? (I am assuming with WPF that due to firewalls and admin policies a direct connect to the database is not an option.)