Silverlight and Rails

Question

Hi

Hopefully this will not spark a religious war...

We have a web based app in RoR based on an earlier version we build in .net 2.0. So we currently have both .net and RoR skills in house.

We want to add a RIA app that interfaces with the rails web app. This should be capable of running offine, with some (perhaps relational) persistence. Considering our inhouse experience we leaning toward leveraging the sliverlight framework over the likes of Flex etc.

Would appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Thanks

Dominic

Answer 1

Go with SilverLight. It's way cool. ;)

Answer 2

A choice between Flex/Silverlight should depend on your skills and what you want the RIA to do.

There's a fair comparison here: http://extremeblue.wordpress.com/2008/04/28/flex-vs-silverlight-my-views/

But I think you should also look at "pure" javascript solutions like ExtJS or JQuery. We've had good experiences with both those libraries + RoR. JS is hot right now. Javascript engines are getting seriously quick and it's a lovely language (in some ways). Offline persistance can be implemented through Google Gears or Adobe Air.

Answer 3

If you need the application to run offline you will want to use a pure client technology. So instead of Silverlight vs Flex you are looking at WPF vs AIR.

Silverlight and Flex are thin client technologies so neither would fit into RoR very well, unless you used RoR to build web services.