Jerry Wayne Odom Jr

In the last year there’s been quite a bit to do with Silverlight, MVC and JQuery.   I’ve been fortunate enough to be exposed to all three in my day job where as many might not get to touch any of them outside of personal exploration.   As we’ve progressed through our learning experience in using these three either alone or in combination it’s become my opinion that the only caseswhere Silverlight LOB is better falls in to the following situations:

1. You want a thinner thick application that also works over the Internet.    Silverlight LOB is sort of like the Taurus Judge of the computer world.  The Taurus judge is a pistol that also shoots shotgun rounds.   It’s not as good as both but it serves the purpose of both decent enough.  
2. You want a web based application that can operate in a partially disconnected environment.    As if Microsoft was reading my mind they magically gave a presentation at Tech-Ed concerning disconnected Silverlight and posted a sample up on Codeplex.   So they definitely see the value there as well.

Noticed I said these are the situations where Silverlight LOB is better.    It’s not necessarily that the MVC + JQuery stuff is better in other situations but it’s certainly falling more in lines with standards.    It also doesn’t force users to install a plugin on their browser like Silverlight does.     However with HTML 5 emerging and JQuery constantly improving you can produce some excellent MVC + JQuery applications that perform much like the Silverlight LOB applications do.   

All this being said I must say that our Silverlight tools we’ve produced have been very successful as have our MVC + JQuery tools.   Everything is service based so a new client for either application is always a quick possibility.    I think careful consideration over which approach better suites the long term objectives of the client combined with their IT infrastructure will guide development teams towards the appropriate choice.   Remember to consider things like the following:

• Can they install a plugin?   Some IT Network Infrastructure teams won’t budge on this.
• Does the application need to be installed like a desktop app?
• Must it run on IPad?   Silverlight can’t at this time.
• Must it be available offline?
• Will we be able to find someone to maintain this?   At this moment it’s hard to find people who’ve used Silverlight in my hiring market.

One big plus to working with the Silverlight LOB application is on a personal note I was able to quickly create a Windows Phone 7 application called Pocket Brewer.   So it prepared me for going in to Microsoft’s mobile market.