Interface Architecture for Silverlight App

Question

I'm getting ready to develop my first Silverlight app. It is going to be primarily used by my church for data input but also will need to generate at least one report, ideally in Excel but XML/XSLT is not outside the realm...

It will be Internet facing and will talk to a SQL Server 2008 db for which I will be creating a web service hosted at the ISP (db is also hosted at the ISP). The clients will be a mix of Windows and Mac.

My question specifically relates to the interface architecture. I know MVVM is big for this right now and I'm comfortable with that. I want to get this up fairly quickly (ie- next 3-4 weeks). I've also seen mention of Prism (Composite Application Guidance) and Caliburn. What are anyone's thoughts on these two? The initial version of the app is not going to be huge so I don't imagine it would be overly difficult to refactor a framework into it at a later date.

Answer 1

Start with something you are very comfortable with especially if you need to get this up quickly. Follow good coding standards and should not be a problem to refactor later into other frameworks if you get a bigger team.

This is a useful pdf.

Answer 2

I haven't read it in detail yet myself, but this article looks rather useful: RIA Architecture with Silverlight in mind

Answer 3

You are right, if it's your first development on SL, adding the complexity of MVVM won't help you much.

I think a good approach could be to go for something simple (e.g.: the good old Document/View could be just a good start http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/4x1xy43a(VS.80).aspx, or just breaking in standard layers, UI / BS / DL).

After that development you will have learnt a lot of good stuff, and then you will be able to throw your app and start new bigger challenges using more advanced architectures (about MVVM, a very good web cast: http://blog.lab49.com/archives/2650 it's WPF based most of the concepts can be ported to SL).

Good luck and enjoy for SL development.

Cheers Braulio