1) All Silverlight network requests (web services, REST services etc) go through the browser networking stack. If your user is logged on to the web application through traditional authentication mechanisms such as forms authentication (cookies), Windows Authentication or Basic Http Authentication (headers) this authentication information will get added to the request. This means that for most cases you don't have to deal with credentials from your Silverlight application, and it will simply pick up what ever is available on the browser. I blogged about this last week: http://jonas.follesoe.no/WCFAuthenticationServicesSilverlightAndSmellyCookies.aspx.<http://jonas.follesoe.no/WCFAuthenticationServicesSilverlightAndSmellyCookies.aspx>
2) That is correct. LINQ looses it's state tracking when you pass it over a web service. However, it's fairly easy (and well documented) on how to manage this your self. Microsoft has fairly good documentation on "LINQ to SQL N-tier Web Services" on http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb882663.aspx . I also used this technique for my Dive Log example application at TechEd (content, video of presentation etc. available on http://jonas.follesoe.no/TechEdANZIsOverAndIGotQuotedOnZDNet.aspx and http://jonas.follesoe.no/TechEd2008NdashSilverlight2ForDevelopers.aspx. Another good alternative is to use ADO.NET Data Services to expose data to your Sliverlight clients, or frameworks like CSLA.NET Light (still early builds). 3) See answer to question one. Silverlight will pick up the same identity as ASP.NET. If you use the ASP.NET Membership Provider, the user signs in, get's an authentication cookie, and any Silverlight request going back to WCF will be authenticated with the same identity (given you use BasicHttpBinding, the one supported by Silverlight, and have turned on ASP.NET Compatibility). 4) Microsoft haven't made any official announcements yet. There have been discussion about enabling to use JSON as default formatter to save bandwith or performance, and even binary serialized XML. 5) I'm not 100% sure I understand your scenario. But if you want to pass information between Silverlight and the hosting ASP.NET page during execution of the application (and not only during start-up) the HTML Bridge lets you do that quite easily. I gave a presentation on the HTML Bridge at CodeCampNZ, and have a good collection of links on http://jonas.follesoe.no/UnitTestingPresentationModelAndTheHTMLBridgeAtCodeCampNZ.aspx Good luck! :) PS: If you're looking for someone to help you implement Silverlight apps I'm available for consulting :) On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Ross McKinnon < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi all, > > I am the CIO of Michael Hill Jeweller which is an international (US, > Canada, New Zealand, Australia) jewellery retail chain whose global head > office is based in Brisbane and we are in the process of replacing our > global website. The executive here are very excited by the opportunities > presented by silverlight and we will be developing the new site using this > technology and are trying to release it as soon as possible. > > I did have a couple of questions which I have posed to Microsoft, but they > have been unable to answer and most of them are directed towards my > personally perceived weaknesses of silverlight and I was hoping that someone > would be able to point out how they can be achieved. Hopefully our work > arounds are not the suggested best practice. > > 1) What is the best way of persisting user identity through multiple > silverlight pages? > > 2) It appears to me that linq to SQL entities seem to lose the ability to > maintain state (ie know what is changed) after passing through a wcf call > and silverlight treats it like a normal class. Is that the case and if so, > is that going to be changed? > > 3) What is the best practice for integrating security and sessions between > asp.net / silverlight / wcf? > > 4) Are there plans for a binary formatter in the silverlight framework? > > 5) I have been overlaying silverlight pages over aspx with master and > content pages. The largest issue with that is being able to pass information > between your master and content pages (easily achievable in aspx), but are > there any plans to implement a method to easily pass information between SL > pages on the client (usually user specific information), other than at > creation of the page. > > Thanks for any help in advance, > > Ross. > > 18/9/2008 Ross McKinnon [email protected] > > This email and any attachments ("Email") are intended only for the > addressee > and may contain privileged, confidential and/or disclosure-exempt > information. > You must not edit this Email without our express consent. > Michael Hill Jeweller (Australia) Pty Ltd does not warrant that this Email > is complete, error-free or virus free, and by opening any attachments, > you accept full responsibility for the consequences. If you are not the > addressee, > you must not disseminate, rely upon or copy this Email, and you must > immediately > erase permanently and destroy all records of it and notify us by phone (at > our cost). > Thank you. > ------------------------------------------------------------------- > OzSilverlight.com - to unsubscribe from this list, send a message back to > the list with 'unsubscribe' as the subject. > Powered by mailenable.com - List managed by www.readify.net ------------------------------------------------------------------- OzSilverlight.com - to unsubscribe from this list, send a message back to the list with 'unsubscribe' as the subject. Powered by mailenable.com - List managed by www.readify.net
