This stuff is hot guys and gals. We are asking Jon Davis to write an entirely new Silverlight demo that will showcase our DynamicQuery feature running under Silverlight inside the browser and hitting a WCF service on the server. We cannot wait, this is so slick … Here’s another sneak peak post.

First the Client Code

Notice here we are using new “QueryProxyStub” classes that are available in through our proxy template (in addition to the existing single object and collection).

Proxies.OrdersQueryProxyStub o = new Proxies.OrdersQueryProxyStub("o");
Proxies.EmployeesQueryProxyStub q = new Proxies.EmployeesQueryProxyStub("emp");
q.Select(q.LastName.ToLower().Substring(2, 4), o.Freight, (q.FirstName + "," + q.Address).As("Mike"));
q.LeftJoin(o).On(q.EmployeeID == o.EmployeeID);
q.Where(q.EmployeeID > 30);
q.es.Top = 50;

// Manually convert it (you won’t need to do this)
string xml = q.Serializer.ToXml();

Their is a new property on the Query called Serializer than can help with certain serialization issues, for the most part however you shouldn’t have to use it. But it’s nice to have around, above we serialize our query to XML via the WCF DataContractSerializer (the entire object graph) via the ToXml() method.

Now the Server Code Deserializing (Simulated)

Notice below that we deserialize the XML from our QueryProxyStub classes into our full blown server side Query classes so that we can execute them. In reality the code that you will write on the server will be much simpler than the code shown below. You will use the KnownTypeAttribute on your WCF Service methods. We will have a full sample showing how this works, don’t let the code below scare you, it’s so easy. This is just test harness code but it works just fine.

using (MemoryStream memoryStream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.Unicode.GetBytes(xml)))
{
    using (XmlDictionaryReader reader =
        XmlDictionaryReader.CreateTextReader(memoryStream, Encoding.Unicode,
        new XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas(), null))
    {
        types = new List<Type>();
        types.Add(typeof(EmployeesQuery));
        types.Add(typeof(OrdersQuery));

        EmployeesQuery emp = new EmployeesQuery();
        DataContractSerializer dcs = emp.Serializer.GetSerializer(types);

        // Deserialize
        emp = dcs.ReadObject(reader) as EmployeesQuery;

        EmployeesCollection coll1 = new EmployeesCollection();
        if (coll1.Load(emp))
        {
            // It worked
        }
    }
}

At this point we could return the newly loaded collection back to the client and it would implicitly be returned as a ProxyCollection.

The Demo

We hope to have an entirely new Silverlight / WCF Demo available to coincide with and built from the upcoming Alpha release. Of course will we do a blog post on that as well. When you see it in action you will be amazed how easy it is. We still have a few issues to work out but things are moving very rapidly now. Imagine having what appears to be the full EntitySpaces API available to you on a client somewhere and only needing to have a single 52k assembly present, and it is fully Silverlight compliant as well. This is just one thing our upcoming release will provide.

From Mobile Devices to large scale enterprise solutions in need of serious transaction support, EntitySpaces can meet your needs. Whether you’re writing an ASP.NET application with Medium Trust requirements, a Mono application, or a Windows.Forms application, the EntitySpaces architecture is there for you. EntitySpaces is provider independent, which means that you can run the same binary code against any of the supported databases. EntitySpaces is available in both C# and VB.NET. EntitySpaces uses no reflection, no XML files, and sports a tiny foot print of less than 200k. Pound for pound, EntitySpaces is one tough, dependable .NET architecture.

EntitySpaces LLC
Persistence Layer and Business Objects for Microsoft .NET
http://www.entityspaces.net