Hi kimj,

>I'm afraid your conclusion is true.

Well, I realize the web-service mapping approach was a bit
of a long shot :).  I just wanted to make sure it wasn't
something I was doing wrong.

Re. your alternatives:

I had looked at the "300SLV / ASPNET Membership with Registration"
sample you mention, and yes, that would probably be Ok,
for at least part of what I want to do.

I had started investigating the third option you mention
(treat aspnetdb like any other database and manipulate
it through DF and EF).  I may give that a shot.  I'd
like to develop an "admin panel" where I can add and
remove users, change their settings, etc.

One question for you about the "300SLV" sample:
The way the code is written, it in-effect does some
security-sensitive branching based on client-side Silverlight
code.  That's Ok in some cases, but if the "Fetch" routine
they call brought back a security-sensitive list of users,
is there a way to add server-side code to only have that
"Fetch" succeed if the current user is for-sure a manager? 
Or is that kind of security something inherently built into
the server-side DF code?

Thanks,
Alan

• DevForce can use ASP.NET Membership directly for simple login/logout. 
• You can pretty easily add access to the Membership API itself (and Roles and Profile) using DevForce support for POCO types.  We have a sample in the Learning Resources which uses both standard DevForce login support along with user registration implemented via POCO in the "100_Security\Samples\300SLV\CodeCS\ASPNET Membership with Registration" sub-folder.  If you use POCO, the provider can use the ASP.NET APIs directly, or the WCF services (or event the corresponding web services).
• You can map the database tables in aspnetdb directly using standard EF and the Object Mapper.   I'm not sure if direct database access to these tables is recommended, but it's certainly possible.

Since the DF-Object Mapper is able, within limits, to map a
"regular" WCF Service, I was able to move on to another
level of challenge.  (I'm still interested to know if there is
any work-around to get the OM to handle "Silverlight-enabled
WCF Services").

What I'm attempting to do is the following:

Background:
Brad Abrams has a blog article and Silverlight sample that
show how to use three, built-in web services exposed by
ASP.NET to manipulate the ASP.NET user/membership/profile system.
See: http://blogs.msdn.com/brada/archive/2008/05/03/accessing-the-asp-net-authentication-profile-and-role-service-in-silverlight.aspx

What I'm trying to do is to get the DF-Object Mapper to
map those three built-in ASP.NET web services:
    AuthenticationService.svc
    RoleService.svc
    ProfileService.svc

I am able to get the DF-Object Mapper to map all three
of them (and create service references for them) without
generating any error messages.  The problems show up
when I then try to build the solution.

Each of the web services gets a corresponding, generated
*.Designer.cs class.  Each has build errors related to the
generated types.

For example, the *.Designer.cs class generated for 
RoleService.svc has 5 compile errors:
"Cannot implicitly convert type 'string' to 'DomainModel.String'"

The *.Designer.cs generated for ProfileService.svc
has 168 compile errors.  Apparently the OM gets confused because
some of the web service methods use this .NET generic type:
Dictionary<string,object>.  In the generated ProfileService.edmx
and *.Designer.cs files that gets turned into the uncompilable
type named "DomainModel.Dictionary`2" (there is a strange
accent character before the "2").

-------------------------------------------------
So my conclusion is: If I wrote my own web services
and stuck to a limited set of simple types, I might be able to
get this to work.  But trying to map arbitrary web services
is not realistic today?  True?

Thanks,
Alan

kimj: Actually the simple method in my test web service
was already returning List<String>, the same as yours.

The problem seems to be that the DF Object Mapper does
not like the "Silverlight-enabled WCF Service".  I'm
not sure exactly why.  As long as I used a standard
"WCF Service", rather than the "Sliverlight-enabled
WCF Service", the DF Object Mapper had no errors adding it.

It didn't matter where I put the web service.  Even
hosting the SL-enabled one on IIS produced the same
"...Index out of range..." error message from the OM.
Hosting the standard "WCF Service" directly in the
Silverlight-hosting web app worked fine with the OM.

Hi Bob,

Thanks for the feedback.

Before you responded I had gone a step further and
added a separate "WCF Web Service" project with
its own additional "Silverlight-enabled WCF Service"
to my existing solution.  But I get the same error from
the DevForce Object Mapper.

As you suggest, I'll try going even further and
move the web service out into a completely separate
solution (and maybe even hosted in IIS).

Thanks,
Alan

Bob: Thanks for trying that out.

Inspired by Bob's success I tried again, but now I get a different error :).

Here are the steps I took:

I created a fresh DevForce Silverlight Application from the VS2008
template.  That creates a client-side SL project and a server-side
web project.  (It just displays "Hello DevForce!" at runtime in the
SL client).

Next I added an Entity Data Model for the NorthwindEF database to
the web project.  I include all the tables and all the views. 
A Model1.edmx file is successfully generated in the web project.

Next I add a "Silverlight-enabled WCF Service" to the web project
using the VS2008 template.  I add one method to it that returns
a List<String> collection.

I run the solution without the debugger, so that the DevForce
Object Mapper will be able to talk to the new web service.

I select the web project in the solution explorer.

Back in VS I run the DevForce Object Mapper from the Tools menu.
I pick Model / Add Web Service from the main menu.
The Object Mapper successfully discovers my web service.
I press "Ok" on the "Add Service Reference" dialog.  It crunches
a little, then the dialog closes and a message appears in the strip at
the bottom of VS saying "Add service reference complete".

But then the Object Mapper pops up a message box titled
"Add Web Service Error", with the message "Unable to add web service:
Index out of range.  Must be non-negative and less than the size
of the collection.  Parameter name: index".

Any idea what is going wrong?

Thanks,
Alan

I couldn't find anything in the Dev Guide (or elsewhere) that
described exactly what the requirements are for the "web services"
that can be added to a domain model.  I would think DF
would be expecting certain types of methods that return
certain types of things.  No?

I'm _guessing_ that the Object Modeler is looking at my
particular web service and not finding what it wants,
so it can't generate a *.EDMX for it?

Thanks,
Alan

Are there any samples of a project that has a web service
added to the domain model?  When I try that with my local
web service (exposed by the same ASP.NET project) I get
this error message from the Object Mapper:
"Unable to add web service: Could not find the file
'M:\ ...(detail removed)...
\PrismExplorer\ModelExplorer.Explorer\ServiceReference3.edmx'"

Any idea why the Object Mapper thinks I should have a *.EDMX
corresponding to the web service I'm trying to add?

BTW: The Dev Guide (p128 about "Mapping a Web Service")
uses as an example a web service that no longer exists :).
The GoogleSearch.wsdl was discontinued in August 2009.
See: http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2009/08/well-earned-retirement-for-soap-search.html