The .NET RIA Services team has published their release plan starting with a CTP in July and ending with RTW during the first part of 2010. These dates are not set in concrete since changes may appear due to user feedback.
The planned milestones with their corresponding feature set are:
CTP - July 2009
This is a preview, not the V1 release. We plan to drop go-live restriction from EULA – still use it at your own risk.
Try to get significant known breaking changes (the ones we don’t know about will come later)
Feature enhancements (e.g. code-gen hook points to add your custom code, improved library support, better shared code support, query for singletons, cleaner user model and better extensibility support for Application Services etc.)
Usual fare of bug fixes, API improvements etc.
Enable a first set of better together experiences with ADO.NET Data Services (add a DomainService to Data Service for writing app logic / expose DomainService as DataService)
Beta - PDC 2009
Additional core feature work (list TBD, under consideration – hierarchy support, presentation model)
Work on Visual Studio 2010 / .NET 4 support
Drag-drop support for data binding
Run in medium trust
Move to ADO.NET Data Services as the underlying protocol
RTW - during first part of 2010
Polish beta release (bugs, performance, stress, security, localization, …)
Small design changes / tweaks
Keep up with changes in other products
The current intent is to make it work on .NET 4.0/VS 2010. Feedback is requested if .NET 3.5 SP1/VS 2008 is to be supported.
What is RIA Services? .NET RIA Services
simplifies the traditional n-tier application pattern by bringing together the ASP.NET and Silverlight platforms. The RIA Services provides a pattern to write application logic that runs on the mid-tier and controls access to data for queries, changes and custom operations. It also provides end-to-end support for common tasks such as data validation, authentication and roles by integrating with Silverlight components on the client and ASP.NET on the mid-tier.
.NET RIA Services helps building n-tier Silverlight or AJAX applications:
We aim to make it nearly as simply as building traditional 2 tier applications. In this space, you should think of RIA services as a more perceptive layer on top of ADO.NET Data Services and WCF. For the data querying and updating aspects of the model we will be using ADO.NET DataServices… this means that you will be able to just “Add Web Reference” to your domain logic and get the standard REST and JSON based access that ADO.NET DataServcies offers. We also expect to eventually provide full access to all the power and flexibility from the underlying WCF services such as highly optimized binary serialization.
It also eases ASP.NET development:
By following the RIA Services pattern, you will also be able to build ASP.NET applications easily while taking advantage of all the built in features of RIA Services such as data validation, authorization, etc. In the March preview, we are offering a asp:DomainDataSource control that enables very easy ASP.NET WebForms access to your domain logic. Building on top of that is a future version of ASP.NET Dynamic Data that makes it very easy to generate common, standard UI based on your domain logic.
.NET RIA services is currently a preview release.