How do I interact with SQL in a Windows Store App

Question

I've been asked to begin developing a Windows Store version of our company's LOB web application. What's the best way to go about interacting with out data store?

My first inclination is to go the HTML/JavaScript(JQuery) route and use a web service to retrieve the data, but I'd like to attempt to use C#/XAML as I'm familiarizing myself with XAML and this would be the perfect opportunity to take a deep dive into XAML.

Is Javascript the only way to communicate with out sql servers, or can I achieve this through C#/XAML? If so can anyone point me in the right direction or perhaps provide a general example of how to "connect the dots" between the WINRT framework and SQL?

Answer 1

XAML is a declarative language based on XML, javascript is a scripting language. I'd suggest reading some basics first before you dive in.

And yes, you can use C# to communicate with remote servers and/or webservices...

Maybe this will help: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh974581.aspx

Answer 2

If you want local database you can use SQLite but I'm guesing that you want external Db

One of my apps is connecting via web with DB. The DB is in Azure. I connect them by simple .net webapi. So my Windows Store App is getting data via webapi from Azure db via HttpClient. It's easy to do. 3 lines of code. I'm sending data as a JSON serialized string sa they take minimum space. It's a good way but you need to remember that when you want to use big objects etc you need to think about caching results, checking the cache, cleaning it etc.

Answer 3

You can accomplish it with C# or JavaScript and you'd do it pretty much the same way, via services. Windows Store (C#/VB) applications don't have the same capabilities as desktop apps do to access databases via interfaces like ODBC, JDBC, SQL Native Client, etc., so you won't be connecting your Win RT app with SQL, you'll be connecting it via a hosted service that itself directly accesses the database.

Depending on how your LOB web application is partitioned, you may be able to expose existing functionality as a service layer and then invoke those services from your Windows Store app via HTTP requests. The HttpClient sample should help and depending on the service implementation you can also use WCF client capabilities in Windows Store apps.