Windows 10 Universal app access SQL server

Question

I am trying to create a Windows Universal app(UWP), and i need to access an SQL Server.

To my knowledge

• System.Data.SqlClient is not available.
• Entity Framework 7 does not support UWP yet.

Do i need a service layer?

Answer 1

Yes, a service layer is required. There's an example of doing so here: How to access data from a SQL Server database in Windows 10 UWP

I wonder a bit about whether this could change given .NET Core's support for EF and ADO.NET, and the remark from this page: EF Core1 in UWP (emphasis mine):

Currently EF only supports SQLite on UWP. A detailed walkthrough on installing Entity Framework Core 1, and creating models is available at the Getting Started on Universal Windows Platform page.

My sense is that UWP's primary concern at this point is handling input, layout, and rendering in a unified way - a major challenge across the families of devices it aims to support. SQLite is pretty widely supported and safe to assume; otherwise, they seemingly went down the data contract/REST based services that are also pretty widely adopted.