How do I choose between WCF, REST, POX and RIA services for a new Silverlight application

Question

There a lot of different ways a Silverlight application can connect back to it’ server. Including

• WCF - Windows Communication Foundation

Answer 1

If you want to create a Silverlight Application and you do not care about other clients, then I would choose RIA Services. It is quite painless to use and you do not need to worry how the connection from the client is made (i.e. no client side configuration necessary). RIA also generates classes for all your entities on the client and you can even share your own "server" code with the client if required (useful for enumerations or extension methods).

Remarks:

• I never tried this, but if you really need you can access the RIA Service also with other clients, after all RIA Services are built on top of WCF services.
• I do not quite understand Akash Kava's security concerns. You can (and have to) control security on the server-side as you would do with any other service.