Using WCF Data Services with Windows Applications

Does it make sense to use WCF Data Services in a开发者_开发技巧 normal Windows applications (Winforms or WPF) or are this technology only suitable for web- or Silverlight applications?

What are the advantages in comparison to normal WCF?

It is really personal preference in any case, frankly. The only real difference between Data Services an "regular" services is that Data Services make some conventions-based assumptions about your transport and data format. If using a RESTful service makes sense to you (which is true for almost all services where the key operations are data querying or manipulation functions), then yes. If you have more workflow-oriented operations, then maybe not (maybe, b/c RESTful services can still represent workflows if they want to, it's just not their normally accepted strength).

Take a look at these video series that shows you a Full Stack of technologies employed to build a orthogonal application architecture.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/The-Full-Stack

If you are targeting to be on cloud in the future, you are taking the right step. If in future you foresee a scenario where products from different technology can use this data service. This may be the right step.