What's New: Client Object Model
Applies to: SharePoint Foundation 2010
Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2010 introduces three new client APIs for interacting with SharePoint sites: from a .NET managed application (not earlier than Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5), from a Microsoft Silverlight application (not earlier than Silverlight 2.0), or from ECMAScript (JavaScript, JScript) that executes in the browser. These new APIs provide access to a subset of the types and members that are contained in the Microsoft.SharePoint namespace of the server-side object model.
The new client object models provide an object-oriented system for interoperating with SharePoint data from a remote computer, and they are in many respects easier to use than the already existing SharePoint Foundation Web services. You start by retrieving a client context object that represents the current request context, and through this context, you can obtain access to client objects at site-collection level or lower in the SharePoint Foundation hierarchy. Client objects inherit from the ClientObject class (JavaScript: ClientObject), and you can use them to retrieve properties for a specific SharePoint object, to retrieve child objects and their properties, or to retrieve child items from a collection.
See Also
Concepts
Common Programming Tasks in the Managed Client Object Model