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Silverlight 2.0 - Rundown of WebServices related functionality in Beta1

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Technorati Tags: Silverlight,WebServices

Hope everyone had a chance to download and play with the Silverlight 2.0 Beta1 bits. I wanted to put up a quick post detailing the features we have shipped in this Beta. We have shipped total of 5 features split across 5 assemblies.

Core Assembly:

  • System.Runtime.Serialization.dll - Data Contract OM and Data Contract Serializer
  • System.ServiceModel.Web.dll - Data Contract JSON Serializer
  • System.ServiceModel.dll - WCF Client side proxy OM and runtime.

Extension/SDK Assembly:

  • System.ServiceModel.Syndication.dll - RSS/ATOM OM
  • System.Xml.Serialization.dll - Xml Serializer

Core assemblies are the assemblies that gets installed on to your box when you install Silverlight 2.0 and SDK assemblies are installed with the SDK. When your app uses SDK assemblies its treated like any other third party dll and gets bundled with user app in the XAP file. All references to core assemblies are loaded from the users Silverlight installation directory. All WebServices components have API/wire parity with recently released Orcas version. We have strived very hard to ensure that the wire representation of Silverlight serialized types are compatible with Orcas serializer.

System.Runtime.Serialization.dll

This contains the DataContract public OM and the DataContractSerializer (DCS) class. The Silverlight DCS serializer supports the following public properties:

  1. Supports DataContractAttributes, CollectionDataContractAttribute, EnumMemberAttribute, DataMemberAttribute and KnownTypeAttributes on types.
  2. XmlDictionaryReader and XmlDictionaryWriters
  3. Ability to serialize Plain Old Clr Objects (POCO or non data contract types)

We are waiting to hear from users to decide on supporting features like IExtensibleDataObject, IDataContractSurrogate and PreserveObjectReferences. Type ISerializable is no longer available in Silverlight and so DCS can no longer serialize pure ISerializable types (it was fallback to serializing it as a POCO type provided the type has a public no argument constructor).

 

System.ServiceModel.Web.dll

We have completely rewritten DataContractJsonSerializer (DCJS) to ensure that the assembly fits in the reduced size requirements of Silverlight. This type is semi-compatible with the Orcas runtime. It maintains a subset of the public method but no longer derives from XmlObjectSerializer. Its a stand alone type and supports serializing any DataContract/POCO type to JSON. JSON produced by the Silverlight serializer is wire compatible with Orcas and so Orcas serializer should be able to deserialize that JSON just fine. Support for working with JXML (XmlJsonReader and XmlJsonWriter classes) is not available in the core and we have shipped it as a standalone sample. We believe the scenarios for JXML on the client is very limited but are open to feedback.

 

System.Xml.Serialization.dll

We have shipped an almost full featured port of the desktop XmlSerializer. Again we have strived very hard to ensure wire compat with existing Orcas serializer. One big implementation difference is the fact that the Silverlight Xml Serializer uses Lightweight Code Gen (LCG) to generate (de)serialize types on the fly. The Orcas serializer used Code Dom to generate the code required to read/write types. This implies that users will not be able to see the generate code. This behavior is actually pretty good as executing IL is way faster than executing raw code. Silverlight doesnt support features like XElement/XNode yet and hence the XmlSerializer doesnt support serializing them yet.

 

Note:

As you can see, I have stressed the "wire" compat nature of Silverlight serializers and did not talk about "Type" compat. Type compat between the serializers would mean that a desktop DataContract/XmlSeriailzable types can be reused in Silverlight. Silverlight being a subset of Orcas, certain serialization features/classes are not available. For example, a ISerializable type in desktop will obliviously will not be serializable in Silverlight. THe only supported way of porting types to Silverlight is "Schema" based. By Schema based I mean, users would need to create type on one side, export the schema for that type and then reimport it on the other side. For Beta1, the only way for importing schema is via the "Add Service Reference" option on a Silverlight project. We will ship the silverlight verison of SvcUtil, SlSvcUtil.exe, in Beta2.

 

System.ServiceModel.Syndication.dll

This is the only assembly that is complete feature port from Orcas. All Orcas RSS/Atom scenarios are fully supported in Silverlight.

 

System.ServiceModel.dll

WCF client side proxy deserves a separate post of its own and I will post one shortly.

 

Maheshwar Jayaraman.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    Technorati Tags: Silverlight , WebServices Hope everyone had a chance to download and play with the Silverlight

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    Technorati Tags: Silverlight , WebServices Hope everyone had a chance to download and play with the Silverlight

  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2008
    Silverlight Web Services

  • Anonymous
    March 16, 2008
    lyfvrX Hi from Russia!

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2008
    Networking in Silverlight 2 Beta 1

  • Anonymous
    April 25, 2008
    PreserveObjectReferences is very important to me.  I want to be able to serialize a graph of business objects, and I don't know how I could get by without it.  Thanks.