Please forgive me for lack of understanding about your scenario.
Please kindly let me know in detail about the scenario.

I'm trying to build (something like) a facebook for business users.  A main aspect of it is searching through a database for other members.  However, most Silverlight tutorials etc focus on the front end and implement the back-end through a great deal of wizard/abstraction. 

Specifically, WCF RIA (data-first) assumes a pre-built database be used to generate an Entity Framework.  Yet then if change or additions are made to the database a new EF generation is required which may break existing abstracted code (though I believe DevForce tools ameliorate this somewhat). 

Yet building an app from scratch a "created first" database is likely to have many iterations.  Thus it seems preferable to build the front end first (using XML data resources as in Intersoft tutorials) and afterward devise/create the database and wire up the plumbing.

Alternatively Microsoft Lightswitch (beta) starts with prompting users to create a database table from which it then automatically abstracts a Silverlight templated front end.  This in theory then would quickly create the scaffolding for the app, around which the ClientUI components & modules could be "wired up".

Granted there are many opinions but insofar as I am still learning much of this any feedback/comments would be appreciated.   

bump

Terribly sorry for the late respond.

ISDataSource control is a data source control developed by Intersoft Solutions for ASP.NET only. the main purpose of ISDataSource is to support Hierarchical Data binding for Intersoft data-bound components, WebGrid.

Intersoft Presenter is data visualization component for Silverlight platform that introduces unique multiple data viewing capability. Should you need more powerful data control, please check the new Grid control, named UXGridView.

LightSwitch is a new addition to the Visual Studio family. It is designed to simplify and shorten the development of typical forms-over-data business application. With LighSwitch, you can use databases which are automatically created or point to an existing data source without the need to write code. Problems may come when you need to do more advance customization.

DevForce in contrast to ISDataSource is a powerful ORM toolkit for building WPF & Silverlight application. it enables you to build data-intensive rich internet application quickly.

Combining ClientUI and DevForce will be the best tool for developing application based on your description. There are some reasons why should you use ClientUI and DevForce.

• It supports MVVM.
• Two solutions, in WPF and Silverlight, share the same source code and XAML.
• Cross-platform
• etc.

Hope this helps.

I'm really struggling with some of the database connectivity strategies.  Specifically after mocking up what I want the UI to look like further development seems convoluted whether Code First or Database first, etc.  Now I understand the Entity Framework is basically a bridge between presentation and data but insofar as it is largely wizard generated it does not seem easy to adapt to later changes on either level.  Moreover, I don't want to learn/use Linq when I am already proficient in SQL.

I realize this message is more complaints than questions but I REALLY do want to use Intersoft components except at the moment I'm instead thinking of backtracking not only out of Silverlight but also to the most basic ADO.NET training by Microsoft. 

Suggestions how I can get past this learning impass (I'm looking at DevForce now) would be much appreciated.