What is .NET RIA Services?

Question

Can someone explain it succinctly? Can it be used with non-Silverlight clients?

Answer 1

Basically, .NET RIA Services is a framework that hides away the network plumbing logic to handle over the wire RPC and bridges the code between the client and the server.

You can think of it as RAD for Client/Server development.

From Dinesh's Blog:
1. Simplify n-tier development (and really show you a better way to get multi-tier story for your ORM objects - LINQ to SQL or EF or whatever)
2. Support Rich Internet Application (RIA) development on Silverlight - there is great end-to-end story for validation, authentication, easy databinding etc.
3. Extend your ASP.NET development experience. This is based on what you know and use already. There is even an ASP.NET DomainDataSource and templates for SEO there (and hopefully some AJAX stuff soon - fingers crossed).

To answer some of your other questions about the future Brad Abrams says:

ASP.NET Access – 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.

Back in Redmond, we are working on provide a very clean access to your domain logic via ASP.NET MVC. The pattern here is very cool, and I can’t wait to talk about it in a future CTP.

If you combine the verity of data sources with the variety of presentation options we are aiming for with .NET RIA Services…

Answer 2

I hate to just forward you to a website, but this link has a good explanation.

Microsoft .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.

From what I understand, this is an abstraction from the code plumbing and your business logic. For instance, you could use LINQ to query across these services using a natural query syntax as opposed to directly dealing with the service protocol in the controller.