In the latest issue of my Data Points column in MSDN Magazine (Nov 2008 issue) I wrote an article titled “Cloud Gazing From Silverlight 2”. It answers some of the most common questions I get when I start talking about Silverlight 2 programs being used for data centric and service driven apps. In the article I address:

- How to handle web services from Silverlight 2

- Consuming ASMX web services

- Consuming WCF SOAP services

- Consuming RESTful services

- LINQ to XML and its role in Silverlight 2

- Cross domain policies

Obviously there is a lot more to talk about in the web service storyline for Silverlight 2, but that’s yet another reason I wrote an entire book on the topic. This article covers the basic needed to jumpstart Silverlight development with web services.

Its funny ... just a few months ago people thought I was nuts for being so interested in the line of business, services, and data story for Silverlight 2. Their argument was that Silverlight was just for gee whiz bang stuff, graphical play doh, and so on ... but not for business apps of any kind. Now, its becoming more and more evident that Silverlight 2 can be a very viable option for data centric solutions. It communicates with all types of web services using SOAP, REST, POX, passes XML JSON, and works with the Flash based cross domain files or uses its own version of the file. There's a lot to it so far and there is a otn more coming in the near future. While the graphical play doh is cool and certainly appealling, people are starting to take notice of its functional uses.

Read more from John Papa.