I've just found out about Visual Studio LightSwitch, Microsoft's new Silverlight-centric RAD tool.
Does this occupy the same space as WCF RIA Services?
Is WCF RIA effectively dead?
I've been doing some reading, and it seems that LightSwitch actually builds on top of RIA. I saw the following in a review in The Register -
Database connectivity and user authentication in LightSwitch uses WCF RIA Services, Microsoft's web service framework for Silverlight, though developers are shielded from the details. This means there is a middle tier running on Microsoft's IIS web server.