Hi,

I'm evaluating technology for a web project my company will be building and I'd like to use LLBLGen with Telerik. This would be an easy decision if we didn't have a requirement that all access to our business services layer be through WCF web services.

I've read all the threads I can find on mixing ASP.net with WCF & LLBLGeb Pro but it is still unclear what all I lose when working across WCF.

I've downloaded the WCF example from your site and ported a limited amout over to ASP.Net, and it more or less works (when doing things from code at least).

My problem is I'd like to be able to use the productivity boosting features that make LLBLGen and Telerik so appealing in the first place like design-time data binding.

The problem is that the collections seem to be non-type-specific like:

// get all customers
_allCustomers = (EntityCollection)MainForm.DalService.GetAllCustomers();
// bind to grid.
customersDataGrid.DataSource = _allCustomers;

What if I want to specify what columns to include unsing all the nifty design-time smart tags and wizards? How is the grid to know that I have a collection of CustomerEntities?

Do all the baked-in AJAX capabilities still work?

Any insights on what I can still do and what is lost when working across WCF would be appreciated.

Also, some more robust examples of working with WCF in an ASP.Net environment would be very helpful as more and more businesses are starting to use it heavily.

-Al

I guess I can assume from the resounding silence on this topic that these do not play well together or, at least, no one is doing it...

Sorry, the resounding silence is probably due to the fact that the Architecture forum is not quite as closely monitored as some of the others. I'll bounce your question up to the development team to see if they can shed some light on your questions...

Passing generic collections over the wire might not work due to the nature of how the data is passed (XML data). You could try, though it likely will fail. You can pass it as IEntityCollection2 and at the client side, cast it back to a known type (EntityCollection<CustomerEntity> ).

After some discussion, we decided to not use WCF between business and presentation tiers, so we are good to go. Can now use self-service templates and easy binding :-)