Sample C#, Silverlight 4, WCF project

This project is called The Gardener. It is a C#, .NET, Silverlight application which connects to an MS SQL Server 2008 via WCF Services.

The project in based on the ideas and techniques used in Pro Silverlight 3 in C# and Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development Beginners Guide books, which provide a great way on getting to know Silverlight 3 and 4 and develop a small scale business application

Find the whole code along with its Database and log file in .mdf format here

The Gardener was built using:

-    MS Visual Studio 2010
-    MS SQL Server 2008
-    Expression Blend 3
-    Silverlight 4
-    WCF Services
-    Pages and Frames for navigation
-    Animations
-    Animation Easing
-    Bing Maps
-    InkPresenter
-    UriMapping
-    Silverlight themes

The Gardener makes use of asynchronous WCF Service calls to store sketches that users make in the Database, by converting the Strokes Collection of the InkPresenter into XML format. Users can after that talk about their dream garden with the people of the Gardener.

The Gardener also uses Bing Maps to pin point the location of the stores upon the map. Bing Maps is the only map control that incorporates fully with Silverlight, as mentioned in Microsoft Silverlight 4 Business Application Development Beginners Guide. Note that you must make an account in Bing Maps and get a key which you must incorporate in the Map control, in your XAML, to get rid of that annoying alert on the Bing Map, which informs you that you provided invalid credentials.

In the Products section, I made use of the Silverlight DataGrid. I must say that this control not only looks great without any customization but it is also very powerful. Sorting, column resizing/moving and field editing with no or with very little code, unlike the ASP.NET GridView.

I used Pages and Frames for navigation in this project, since in this way I can keep track of the browser's history and navigate using the backwards and forward buttons of the browsers.

Animations and Animation Easing gives a better look and feel on the Pages of the application and makes it even better in the eyes of the customers.

Finally, my overall experience using the tools, technologies, techniques and IDEs was great, although I had a little bit of a hard time installing MS SQL Server 2008 and MS Visual Studio on my Windows 7 machine.

Next project I am looking forward to implementing is a full scale business Silverlight 4 application, using the Silverlight business application template of MS Visual Studio 2010 which will connect to the Database using RIA Services. For that I intend to study from Pro Business Applications with Silverlight 4 by Chris Anderson.