A Domain-Driven, DB4O Silverlight RIA

Build a Domain Driven Rich Internet Application using Silverlight, RIA Services and DB4O

• Download the Example Solution for Silverlight 3
  


• Download the Example Solution for Silverlight 4
  

I was recently ranting about Silverlight-2 and my annoyance with the WCF layer needed to serialize object instance data to the server. Well Microsoft must have had their mind-reading machines turned up high because the newly announced Mix09 Silverlight 3 & RIA services preview has solved nearly all the problems I was having.

Its the RIA (Rich Internet Application) Services that has the real wow-factor. This is Silverlight finally growing up. Instead of creating Frankenstein client-server apps crudely stitched together with WCF, RIA services allows you to treat your client and server as one, almost seamless application. You share domain design intentions between the client and the server so that your domain acts as you intended regardless of which side of the machine boundary you are on. This is how RIA development was always meant to be. 

You can download all the software kit you need from here the main Silverlight-3 site. I found the best way to get started was to watch the following Mix09 presentations then read the RIA Services Overview.

• Building Amazing Business Centric Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3
  "Come hear how simple it is to build end-to-end data-intensive Silverlight applications with the new set of features in Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services. Explore Silverlight improvements that help to enable rapid development for business applications and to make your development process more productive"
  
  
• Building Data-Driven Applications in ASP.NET and Silverlight
  "Learn how Microsoft is simplifying the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together ASP.NET and Silverlight. Learn about patterns for working with data, implementing reusable and independently testable application logic, and application services that readily scale with growing requirements"

Of course Microsoft just could not help plugging their dystopian Data-Driven-Design vision. Look at the title of that second presentation for goodness sake. 

To counter this and to provide a solid Domain-Driven template for future Silverlight RIA apps I have created an example that does away with the monolithic SqlServer and Igor, the Entity Framework, in favour of an light, fast object database repository that promotes good Code Cohesion, Separation of Concerns and Inversion of Control.

Here is the tech I use in the example:

• Silverlight 3
  
• RIA Services
  
• DB4O
  
• StructureMap

An Overview of the Domain Driven RIA Example

This example does just enough to highlight the primary functions of RIA services as I see them.

1. You can define and use your domain objects on the server and then effectively re-use domain logic on the client. 
   
   
2. You can transmit domain objects between the client and server without polluting your domain or requiring an additional DTO transformation layer.
   

The example is a stripped down version of an app I am currently writing so I have left in all the domain structure even if it is not actually used in the example. This makes the application ready to go if you want to start fleshing it out with your own code.

The functionality is quite simple. You are presented with a Silverlight 3 navigation application. There is a sign-in link that takes you a view containing a username and password field, sign-in and register buttons. 

The code works as you would expect with the additional extra that typing into the Name field triggers a 1 second timer that will check (on the server) that the name is unique. Clicking the Register button creates a new user in the server-side DB40 database. Clicking the Sign In button checks the db for the supplied credentials and, if they exist will return the appropriate User instance and cleverly navigate you back to the home view. 

If you have watched the videos you might at this point think I have cheated and used the built in Authentication Domain Service that come with RIA. Not so. That service relies on having a fat SQLServer file squatting in your solution and that is no good for a Domain-Driven purist. Instead I have implemented a very simple custom identity authentication that could easily be linked up to either Forms or Windows authentication in the usual way.

Download the Example Solution From Assembla

NB: If you get an error about the URI Prefix then you need to reset the startup application to DomainDrivenRIA.Web and the startup page to DomainDrivenRIA.SilverlightTestPage.aspx