Building Enterprise level Line of Business application in silverlight Pros and Cons

Question

Hello Experts,

Currently i am working on developing one Warehouse solution from scratch, i am planning to build it in silverlight (as this solution will take around 8-10 months) and the programming will start from Feb 2010.

I need to develop this application for one organization. Certain parts needs to be accessed by public which we are planning to build in ASP .Net 3.5

Now i just wanted to start a thread here for pros and cons of using silverlight, some of them i have already analyzed

Pros :

1. Rich UI
2. Excellent user experience
3. Reduction of scalability concerns
4. New set of features like data binding, control template etc..
5. Speed of development (After initial learning curve..my experience says it is faster to develop it in silverlight)
6. Other rich set of features coming up with SL 4.0 (SL 4.0)

Cons :

1. Cross platform issues (moonlight is there but it may take some time)
2. Cross browser issues (Chrome or other browsers)
3. Learning curve
4. Any other unknown risk (As there are not many enterprise level application developed in silverlight...or may be i am not aware)

I have also got one link for Pros and cons of silverlight(here) some of the cons might not be relevant with SL 4.0

Also i am having one good link for comparison between ASP .Net Ajax with Silverlight (here)

EDIT :

I have also found Technical Article series in code project (Just Type @ google "Adventures while building a Silverlight Enterprise application" and you will get it, i am trying to analyze this series as well)

Please add some pros and cons if you find as i am trying to analyze it from all the angles. It will be of great help if you find any whitepaper on it.

Answer 1

Since you are developing solution for the warehouse, you may need consider building a web service with wcf pollDuplex (basically push data from server to the client periodically), just a note on it: it is not (yet) a very scalable and reliable (prior to SL4). Default concurrent connection is 10 (if I remember well), and you have the option to overwrite this default number, however, I haven't find a way to dynamically change this number which turns out to be a scalability issue.

One cool feature I like about SL 4 is the added support of printing, now you have the built-in ability to print the content.

Answer 2

The Pros and Cons have to be weighed against your own requirements.

Rich UI

Compared to what? Its not really a Pro, other tools can deliver Rich UI, where does one draw the line that allows a UI to call itself Rich? A Pro can't be a Pro if can't be measured.

Excellent User Experience

That isn't a Pro either. I wish I could buy product that delvers such a thing out of the box. The reality is it's up to you to deliver the UX. E.g. Stackoverflow delivers an excellent user experience, it doesn't use a tool like SL and it's entirely down to good design not the tool (ASP.NET-MVC+various other tools).

Reduction of Scalability Concerns

Compared to what? Early ASP.NET Forms with extensive use of callbacks then yes. However plain old HTML with Javascript frameworks can deliver this same "Pro".

Speed of Development

Well that depends on how you measure speed and how you weigh the importance of the UX. Currently SL developement isn't any better at ticking off business function points than other tech like poor old ASP.NET Forms and is probably worse. However delivering those same function points with a slick, imaginative UI may tip the balance more in WPF/SL's way. In reality SL allows you deliver more UX with some (but importantly not prohibative) extra effort.

Other Rich Features in SL4

Only a Pro if they would actually add value to your requirement.

Cross Platform

Do you really have a Cross Platform requirement? Within a warehouse business how many Linux and Mac desktops are there? That should answer your cross platform question.

Cross Browser

Is this a Con? Does the company in question allow the use of a variety of browsers? If so which? You can compare that to the browsers SL4 supports and out pops your answer but its your answer not everyones answer. Isn't cross-browser a bigger concern for the Extranet-esq part of the app?

Learning Curve

In all of these factors what are you already versed in is by far and away the most important. I'm guessing its MS tools and in particular .NET, right?

If you're not familiar with WPF already there is some learning curve but its not very steep. However you should definitely make sure you take the time to perform some training projects before you even start designing your real product. That process should help you measure how long it will really take and whether it is really feasable.

Other Known Risks

SL is still very young and it won't sit still. Frustrating "issues" will eat time.

Other questions to ponder

What UX ideas do you have that can't be delivered by a browser?

Why deliver the app via a browser hosted app at all? A WPF application not an option?

Silverlight 4

Considering your timescales if you do choose Silverlight you should target SL4.

Answer 3

Anyone bulding an Enterprise LOB with a Silverlight client should take a look at John Papa's PDC video.

However, IMHO the initial release of RIA Services was too limited. Now that the next version is buit on top of WCF Services, and the endpoints can be switched out to make them more accessible by more UI clients RIA Service is probably a very sensible investment too.

Mark