title: Combining .NET RIA Services and MVVM in Silverlight 3.0
body: <p>When using .NET RIA Services and MVVM in Silverlight 3.0 is there a difference between the Metadata type from RIA Services and the ViewModel from the MVVM pattern? Are these the same thing or should they be keep separate?</p>
  
  <p>The metadata type is a sealed internal class to the partial Entity class. There doesn't seem to be a proper separation there but the metadata type can also be decorated with attributes for Validation which makes it look like a ViewModel. </p>
  
  <p>I've searched around but I didn't see anything that talks about this in any detail. </p>