Using WCF Data Services with Windows Applications

Does it make sense to use WCF Data Services in a开发者_开发技巧 normal Windows applications (Winforms or WPF) or are this technology only suitable for web- or Silverlight applications?

What are the advantages in comparison to normal WCF?

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It is really personal preference in any case, frankly. The only real difference between Data Services an "regular" services is that Data Services make some conventions-based assumptions about your transport and data format. If using a RESTful service makes sense to you (which is true for almost all services where the key operations are data querying or manipulation functions), then yes. If you have more workflow-oriented operations, then maybe not (maybe, b/c RESTful services can still represent workflows if they want to, it's just not their normally accepted strength).

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Take a look at these video series that shows you a Full Stack of technologies employed to build a orthogonal application architecture.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/The-Full-Stack

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If you are targeting to be on cloud in the future, you are taking the right step. If in future you foresee a scenario where products from different technology can use this data service. This may be the right step.