Rajeev Pentyala – Technical Blog on Power Platform, Azure and AI

To communicate with CRM 2011 from Silverlight application you can either use SOAP or REST endpoints.

URL’s for both endpoints will be available under “Developer Resources” section (Go to Settings -> Customizations -> Developer Resources)

Below are the important points on usage & limitations of both endpoints

Using REST endpoint with Silverlight

• CRM 2011 uses the WCF Data Services framework to provide an OData endpoint that is a REST-based data service.

• This endpoint is called the Organization Data Service
• It supports early bound entity types so that the coding will be easy (i.e., you can instantiate contact c=new contact(); c.name=”Rajeev”)
• Limitations
  • Only Create, Retrieve, Update, and Delete actions can be performed on entity records
  • You need to regenerate the proxy every time you change the entity schema (Ex – If you create a new entity or attribute)
  • You cannot use late binding to work with custom entities that were not included when proxy generated.
  • Here is the MSDN article Walkthrough REST in Silverlight

Using SOAP endpoint with Silverlight

• Unlike the REST endpoint, the SOAP endpoint uses the Organization service
• You can do all the operations with SOAP endpoint
• Here is the MSDN article Walkthrough SOAP in Silverlight
• SOAP does not provide early bound entity types natively but here is article to how to use early bindings with SOAP

🙂