This looks like something that will really boost Silverlight adoption in the enterprise. As you may know I like functional software: good looking websites are great but I want them to actually do something. Until now it was pretty hard to create business websites in Silverlight, which was primarily created to provide a great user experience.

Enter .NET Rich Internet Application Services: designed for business applications, to show, query and validate data and manage cross-cutting concerns such as security.

Now you may find this screenshot a bit boring. But I actually like it: this is stuff we can use at projects. The experimental phase has passed and we can now do more than render fancy controls and animations…

To start using .NET RIA Services you need the following software:

• Microsoft Silverlight 3 Developer Runtime
• Microsoft Silverlight 3 Beta SDK
• Microsoft Silverlight 3 Tools for VS2008SP1

Obviously you will also have to get the RIA Services installer and there also is a 116-page overview document available at that location.

After you install the RIA Services, new items appear in your start menu: A walkthrough, API documentation and a link to that same overview document.

The API documentation shows new namespaces available in RIA Services:

• System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations
• System.Web.DomainServices
• System.Web.DomainServices.LinqToEntities
• System.Web.DomainServices.LinqToSql
• System.Web.DomainServices.Tools
• System.Web.Ria
• System.Web.Ria.ApplicationServices
• System.Web.Ria.Data
• System.Windows.Controls
• System.Windows.Data
• System.Windows.Ria.ApplicationServices
• System.Windows.Ria.Data

If you are really interested, check out these presentations at MIX:

Building Amazing Business Centric Applications with Microsoft Silverlight 3

Code and a running app are available here.

Building Data-Driven Applications with Microsoft Silverlight and Microsoft ASP.NET