A month ago I posted the results of some experimentation with the preview bits of what was then called .NET RIA Services, Silverlight 3 and the Windows Azure with AspProvider sample code from the Azure July 2009 CTP. That was then and much has changed.

Windows Azure 1.0 and what is now called WCF RIA Services Beta have since been released. Lot’s of great changes make using these together with the new AspProvider sample in the “Additional C# Samples” download that some friendly readers shared with me. With Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and SQL Server 2008 (Express if you want) and these you’re set up to play.

WARNING: They were not lying about the WCF part when they renamed it. The default Domain Service channel is binary and they’re using Windows Activation Service (WAS). So make sure you’re Windows Features look something like this or you’re in for several hours of maddening error chasing.

After some review of the previous effort using the July 2009 CTP and RIA preview bits, I decided starting over was the best course of action. Here’s the steps to nirvana:

1. Create a new Silverlight Business Application called Adventure which produces Adventure.Web application as well.
2. Add new CloudService project with WebRole called AdventureCloudService and WebRole1.
3. Copy WebRole.cs to Adventure.Web and rename namespace.
4. Add 3 azure refs to Adventure.Web.
5. In the cloud service project file, replace WebRole1 with Adventure.Web and project guid with that from Adventure.Web. (There is probably a better way to do this.)
6. The node under Roles in the cloud service project shows an error. Right click it and choose “associate” and pick Adventure.Web.
7. Copy system.diagnostics section from WebRole1 web.config to that of Adventure.Web.
8. Remove WebRole1 from solution and set service project as startup.
9. Copy and new AspProviders project and sections from demo web.config into Adventure.Web, changing DefaultProviderApplicationName and applicationName="Adventure".
10. Do the same previous steps to create/copy UserProfile class and IUserProfile with FriendlyName property too. Added to the Models directory this time. NOTE: Be sure to get the magic strings right in the UserProfile class or you will get unexpected results.
11. Add Global.asax and AppInitializer class to it from previous project without the CreateTableFromModel calls which are no longer needed as I understand it.
12. Drop in the code to create the admin user if it does not already exist.
13. When I go to modify the LoginStatus.xaml which was previously LoginControl.xaml, but find the needed modification is already there. Skip this step.
14. Just hit F5 and error is thrown.

After some lengthy research, I discovered a bug in the AspProvider's TableStorageRoleProvider.cs. When the RoleExists method is called and no roles have yet been created an exception is thrown.

AspProvider Fix Found
Replace e.InnerException in line 484 in TableStorageRoleProvider.cs with e.InnerException.InnerException. The first inner exception is another InvalidOperationException. The second inner exception is the DataServiceClientException we're looking for.

Login with admin/admin and we see Administrator displayed in the newly renamed LoginStatus area.

And we’re back to par. Download the code here (566KB).