View Model Pattern with .NET RIA Services

Over the weekend, I saw a question on StackOverflow about combining .NET RIA Services and the ViewModel pattern and answered briefly there, but the topic is worthy of a blog post. At a high level, .NET RIA Services generates a data model for use in the client presentation tier based on the application logic you author for the server portion of your application. The question is how could/should this data model fit into a view model. I blogged about the ViewModel pattern a long while back in the context of my Silverlight.FX work. This post will take care of a few things at the same time: (a) show how the two work together, and (b) show how the work in Silverlight.FX itself has evolved over time. For most of the post, I'll walk you through...(read more) ...