Building Business Focused Applications with Microsoft Silverlight

Microsoft’s Silverlight, especially its new 3.0 beta version, is usually synonymous with ultra cool visual effects, the ability to create mind-blowing animations, and a number of other stunning media capabilities. Very rarely -- if ever -- do we hear about Silverlight being a business application platform, which is a shame, considering all that it’s capable of doing for both large and small businesses alike.

Silverlight powers rich application experiences wherever the web works, and it has great potential for business application tools and techniques that are sure to make any developer’s life much easier. Unfortunately, what’s usually the case is that developers have to make a trade-off between a rich interactive experience through the use of a client application and the super easy development they can have with a web application.

From a professional standpoint, Silverlight has the potential to help businesses find the middle ground between these two choices. Just imagine: what if you could develop business solutions with the ease pioneered by Microsoft Office Access, deploy them like an Internet application, and take advantage of the power of Microsoft .NET?

Using Silverlight for business purposes will allow users to learn about the exciting new technology that is centered around making business applications for RIA (Rich Internet Applications) much easier to build. Microsoft’s Silverlight has made n-tier application development as simple as traditional 2-tier development; provided application level solutions to developers; and has done all of this with the same .NET platform and tools on both the client and server.

Common Business App Needs

Using Silverlight for business purposes will prove to be very different from using it to create ads or other media. Generally speaking, there are three common business app needs, with the first being providing users and customers of your site with a rich experience.

That doesn’t mean outfitting your business site with cursors that look like happy faces or bright, sparkly glitter graphics. It means providing your users with an interactive user interface model for working with data. Having a successful business site will be largely dependent on your site’s user interface and its ability to easily and coherently direct clients to all the information they seek with the click of a mouse.

The second most common business app need is application logic. Users of your business site should experience a highly productive development experience, meaning that if they click on a link it should lead them to their destination without any problems, and programs should load without any difficulty.

Lastly, your business app needs Internet application deployment, which ensures a pure web development.

Those helping to expand their business online should consider these three things as the defining characteristics of what they should require when considering their business application. Thankfully, Silverlight is the perfect medium to make it all happen.

How Silverlight Can Service Business Needs

Silverlight is a free Microsoft service, and those looking to take their business online should begin to consider it the foundation for what is to come. Aside from having the needed platforms and building blocks, Silverlight’s core enables CLR, BCL, XML, and five different ways to do networking. Even more handy is Silverlight’s user interface, which features core controls, control model, layout, styling, and data binding.

When choosing to build your business online, one of the most critical decisions you will make pertains to the platform you choose for your business app. As mentioned earlier, developers were essentially forced to choose between richness vs. reach, with the ultimate goal being parity in productivity. Silverlight should be thought of as a bridge between the two, and though it may be ideal for some business, let’s be realistic: it has its limitations.

On one side of the spectrum there is ASP. NET, which has the broadest reach and the most mature development platform. On the opposite end of the spectrum is WPF, which offers the richest interactive interface, can be accessed offline, and features desktop integration. Silverlight is smack dab in the middle; it offers a broad reach and an interactive interface, but not much else.

ASP.NET has the furthest reach, and it’s been said that Microsoft intends on incorporating quite a few of ASP.NET’s features into Silverlight and WPF in the near future. Before you make the critical decision of choosing your platform, it’s important to understand how business applications work.

What Makes a Business App Tick?

First and foremost, it’s important to have a general definition of a business app. Essentially, business apps are almost always universally about working with data in some shape or form. Whether it’s creating it, shaping it, or manipulating the data, it’s about applying business logic to that manipulation of the data.

At its heart, a business app needs a way to move data between tiers, and with Silverlight you’ll need at least three tiers: the database, mid tier, and the client.

A successful business app also needs a way to shape data, whether it is sorting, filtering, etc., and a way to bind and display data in the user interface.

Lastly, a successful business app needs a way to soundly apply business logic to the data. Technically, there are about 1,001 ways to apply and insert business logic into an application such as Silverlight, but only about three of them are actually “sound.”

One of the major actions your business app should help you with is moving data, and Silverlight has a number of features that will really benefit this action. It has a browser-integrated networking stack, which will allow you to share cookies and make direct HTTP requests. On top of that, Silverlight also features a complete web services stack that will enable you to use WCF to build to REST or SOAP-based web services.

If you’re used to Visual Studio, Silverlight enables users to use a simple “Add Service Reference” experience to consume. WebClient is also an option that can be used to consume REST and Plain-Old XML. All of these are traditional DOT.NET ways to move data, but Silverlight also has more advanced ways to perform the same actions.

Silverlight Options

All networking in Silverlight is restricted to the same domain because technically, it’s just not very safe to do cross-domain networking requests. Silverlight offers cross-domain support, meaning that all cross-domain networking requests are constrained to the same domain by default. Also, cross domain is enabled via server side configuration file.

Another advanced data moving feature pertains to communication. If you want two-way communication, meaning not only do you want to receive data from the server, but you also want to push data to the client, Silverlight features two different options for this. The first is sockets to the metal communication, which is quite complex from a programming model perspective because many will encounter firewall and proxy issues.

The second option is something called WCF Duplex, which is a messaging Q-based programming model between the server and client. This option has a straightforward programming model, and users won’t run into the firewall and proxy issues that seem to plague the more complicated sockets option.

If you want to do something like taking a database and exposing it to the web, Silverlight’s ADO.NET data services are an excellent option for moving data. It’s an incredibly easy way to expose and consume data via REST, and it’s optimal for straight data access.

As you can see, Silverlight’s business app options are endless. So far we’ve only covered the process of moving data, but rest assured that no matter what issue arises, the Silverlight business app platform will see to it that everything is dealt with in the safest and most secure way.

It may be hard for some to get past Silverlight’s glossy persona. It was originally introduced to the world as the new way to view graphics and to create animations. With the recent release of Silverlight 3.0, which is in its beta phase, it may become even more difficult for users to see the program as a way to build and run an online business.

Silverlight 3.0’s site features a dizzying array of crystal clear graphics and animations that showcase everything from streaming broadcasts of sporting events and interviews with pro athletes to concert performances. Chances are, users already understand that Silverlight is an excellent option for online streaming, especially after Microsoft teamed up with MSN during the Beijing Olympics in 2008 to provide thousands of hours of coverage of the games live online. There’s also more than enough information available online that shows interested users how to utilize Silverlight to create amazing graphics and animations from the comfort of their own home and without any technical training to speak of.

If Microsoft really wants it Silverlight program to be taken seriously as a business app option, they’re going to have to do a better job at marketing it. The glitz of the programs animation features are definitely appealing, but surely there are more out there that need help choosing a platform for their business app. Hopefully Silverlight 3.0’s business app abilities will come more to the forefront so that it becomes the clear choice for many struggling to pick the right platform.