Silverlight can use WCF, Web Services, REST based services, .NET RIA Services, but it seems like Silverlight and .NET RIA Services are preferred most.
I want to know if
Ria services are created just to be used with Silverlight. They are substantially a standard "package" ready to be used by Silverlight. The advantage is that you have a lot of services without need to write code i.e.:
All things done by Ria can be done with WCF and with other available software and in particular with Wcf data services. For instance for data annotations I found this library that do a better job than Ria services, support for membership just require activating the already existing membership endpoint of a WCF service, and finally the exception problem is easily resolved by writing a WCF behaviour. Code is available here:http://www.silverlightshow.net/Storage/10Tips.zip The point is that with Ria Service you have all this in a mouse click!. On the other side Ria Services are really difficult to customize...so if you don't like the standard solution they offer you simply can't use them