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In this third and last part of the duplex story in Silverlight, we’ll take a look at the third option offered by Silverlight to perform duplex communication.

Let’s quickly review the first two options. In Part 1, we looked at the Http Polling Duplex binding. Using a continuous polling mechanism on the network layer, this binding makes it possible to create an illusion of duplex communication. The big plus of this binding is the possibility we have to use it in internet scenarios, since all communication goes over plain HTTP.

In the first part of this series on duplex communication in Silverlight 4, we did a deep dive in one of the available options offered by the platform, namely the Http Polling Duplex binding. It’s advised that you read that article first, since this second part continues where we left of in the first part.

To summarize the first part quickly, we saw that Silverlight applications in some situations can really benefit from duplex communication. In scenarios where the client needs to be updated because of changes in the state of the server side (for example a change in a database, a file change…), the best solution is working duplex.

As we have recently announced, a hot book on data-driven applications with Silverlight - Microsoft Silverlight 4 Data and Services Cookbook was expected to hit the market. The book is now out and there is a 20% price discount available exclusively for SilverlightShow community with promo code SShow20Net.
 
We are talking to one of the book authors - Gill Cleeren, Microsoft Regional Director for Belgium - on what we should expect from the book and how it will help you build better and faster data-driven Silverlight solutions.

Uploading and downloading images using a WCF service with Silverlight

Quite often, when browsing the web, we encounter a situation where we are required to upload a file. When I want to register myself on a forum, I often get the question if I want to upload an avatar. Or when using a social networking site such as Facebook, I can upload pictures of me doing something that probably no one is interested in. The point I’m trying to make here is that when developing in Silverlight, we’ll also come in a situation where we want our users to upload files such as images to the server.