I developed WPF / XAML applications that call objects (functions or web services) that retrieve data from different sources (SQL Server DB, Active Directory, Oracle DB, SAP RFC, XML files, flat files, etc.).
These objects always return Datasets, which are then attached to datagrids to display information to the user, in addition, I do interesting things with data sets (combine tables, retrieve metadata / structure, create new columns, etc.).
Since WPF is designed for desktop computers, it becomes tedious and costly to deploy an application on each computer, so I highly recommend using the Silverlight Business Application to access applications over the Internet and easily adapt to Windows Phone 7 in the near future.
It seemed easy to switch from WPF to Silverlight, but I ran into some problems and focused on data management: Silverlight does not support datasets.
I felt a little upset because I had to make a copy of all my functions / web services and modify them to return objects other than datasets.
However, so far I can’t find an object equal or better than a dataset, which, by the way, also allows me to use it interchangeably in both Silverlight and WPF.
Has anyone found a powerful and convenient solution that is superior to that offered by the data set? If yes, please let me know with examples or links to find out.
Thank!!