Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

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Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

posted @ Wednesday, August 20, 2008 1:54 PM | 6 Comments

A while back I pondered doing a “live” debug session with people who were/are working with Silverlight 2 and data access via services, etc. I really like a live concept because it allows people to ask real questions and feels more conversational than a one-way presentation. After some consideration, I’m not sure I could quite guarantee the environment I was looking for to accomplish this type of style.

confused man image So as a second best, I’ve set up a webcast: Troubleshooting Silverlight Data Access. I hope to keep the question channel open during the webcast though and answer as many questions as possible. I’ve seen many questions on forums, through emails, and all over the interwebs about people hitting certain pitfalls with Silverlight and data access. Most of these are common scenarios and you need just a bit of “a-ha!” help to get you over the confusion stump. That’s my aim. I have set aside an hour (would have liked to do it sooner, but just time doesn’t permit right now) to tackle the most common things I’m seeing with data and Silverlight. I’ll create the scenarios that get you stuck and show you what I do to help get you un-stuck from those moments. Stop scratching your head any longer!

UPDATE: The webcast is now available online for playback.

We’ll look at tools you can use, how you can dig deeper into error messages, working with different types of data, etc. I want to help! Please leave your questions here on this blog post as a comment so that I can be sure to address the scenarios. This isn’t a 1:1 debug session, so it will be hard to tackle the “hey, I’ve got this service from my AS/400 server exposed as a fitzer-valve service bus, which is able to be called from my Java front-end but doesn’t work in Silverlight: why not Tim?" questions, but I hope to help get you along the path of what to look for and to avoid the common mistakes.

Sound good? I’m looking forward to it. Again, please leave comments on this post so we can have the best possible session. You can register for the webcast here. I look forward to our time together :-).

tags: silverlight, astoria, data access, wcf, asmx, web services, fiddler, web dev helper, 404, data binding, binding, linq

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution By license.

Comments

Shawn Wildermuth

8/20/2008 10:07 PM | # re: Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

FYI: I discussed debugging Data Services here:

wildermuth.com/.../Debugging_ADO_NET_Data_Servi...

Though until Silverlight 2 has a release, I think debugging the beta service with the SP1 Release version of the Data Service is probably a waste of time.
timheuer

8/20/2008 10:33 PM | # re: Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

Shawn: Yes (anyone wanting to know about anything Astoria should subscribe to Shawn), this is true. I think fundamentally we might be able to at least show the "how" even if it isn't working. I personally don't like the datasvcutil.exe concept and wish the Add Service Ref dialog would change to include an option of "Check here if your endpoint is Astoria" and then silently do whatever it needs for the end user. But excellent point that (if asked as well) we need to point out. Hopefully you can hop on the webcast and help answer some questions...maybe we could have a panel of peeps as voice presenters?
Ben Hayat

8/21/2008 7:49 AM | # re: Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

Hi Tim;

Firstly, thank you for tackling this subject. I'll add a few points here as well:

Let's look at this subject from a broad point of view first. "Consuming database with SL"! Back in SL 1.0 when developers started creating their own home grown services to use databases, there was no clear path from Microsoft what the direction is. Then once EF became more clear, Astoria began to emerge and very quickly (I think the fastest product in MS history) became part of .Net framework. So now, we do have a clear direction for the middle tier server that people no longer need to create their own home grown services (unless they want to). Then it comes the client part (which has been dragging for ever) to close this loop.

So, soon we should have a nice solution for SL to consume databases via ADO.Net Data Services. I'm sure this will become the standard way of doing so (I really like the approach of Astoria).

So, before we get into debugging, testing and things that are more involved with details, why don't we have a couple of sessions to outline this framework and how it works with Silverlight and how Silverlight developer should begin to think using databases in Async mode and so on. The whole approach of Async should be one the emphasis of how Astoria and SL work.

Instead of bits and pieces, let's set a direction how to use Astoria and SL and produce result. The debugging and other issues can come in the future.

I had brought up this issues with the data team, but somehow it feels like there is no one home to listen to. They have put a great framework together, and only a handful of people are using it on the forum. I've desperately asked the team for docs and samples for months, and it has been ignored.

Although Shawn as an independent trainer has and is doing a great job bringing Astoria to the forefront, but it needs to be officially done by MSFT rather depending on third party to represent that product.

Tim, I think before you start this session, you should have the data team involved to make sure you are backed up with further support. Because once you open this subject, get ready with lots of questions.

Hope this comments will help!
..Ben
dwi

8/21/2008 8:23 AM | # re: Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

silverlight just doesn`t work with me... it`s frustating for low intrnet connection user. ADOBE FLASH way much better than silverlight. at least i could pause the video and wait for the video fully loaded (which i cant use with silverlight)and watch it without have to see "buffering text" on my screen. just face it.. silverlight doesn`t work and people hate it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ben Hayat

8/21/2008 8:50 AM | # re: Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

>>silverlight just doesn`t work with me... it`s frustating for low intrnet connection user. ADOBE FLASH way much better than silverlight.<<

And that's why we have Honda Civics for lower income people and Ferrari for higher income crowd!

>>silverlight doesn`t work and people hate it<<
Once I saw a sticker on a Pinto that said "I hate Ferrari..." ;-)
ashraful.asif

8/25/2008 12:03 AM | # re: Troubleshooting data/service access in Silverlight

Hi timheuer,

We select silverlight and ADO.net entity framework and WCF service for our project and we have finished the project but when we want to do load test silverlight throw error. The problem is big image size (8MB) and we are saving images at SQLServer 2005 and we have already edit the max packet size. So, pls help me how can i resolve my problem

Thanks

asif