Preface
Management applications, also known as Line of Business (LOB) applications, constitute a great piece of the pie, that is the software development market. Until a few years ago, a management application used to be implemented as a desktop app. However, this approach has some drawbacks, as globalization pushes us to implement information systems that support remote access via a standard web browser.
Targeting an LOB application to run on a web platform adds greater complexity to such a development, bearing in mind the fact that the Web was not conceived to host applications which need heavy interaction with the user. Derived from this necessity, the term Rich Internet Application (RIA) emerged. RIAs are web applications that are used in a similar way to desktop applications.
Silverlight 5 is Microsoft's commitment to the implementation of RIA, which will allows us, among other things:
- To implement an application from beginning to end with powerful languages (C#, VB.NET, and so on), with no more of JavaScript
- To implement advanced UI (XAML markup language)
- To work with professional data access (WCF, RIA Services, Entity Framework, and so on)
- To decouple designer and developer roles
- To have the user able to install the application as if it was a desktop one