CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sql-serversilverlight
Ken D
Ken D

Reputation: 5968

Why Microsoft did not include SQL Server support in Silverlight?

It really bothers me to depend on WCF to provide DB support to Silverlight.

My guess is that Silverlight is client-side in the end, and Microsoft wants to give some kind of main access/entry-point for data which is the server-side code.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 473

Answers (4)

Yannick Motton
Yannick Motton

Reputation: 35991

Silverlight follows the web paradigm, and seems to try to bridge the gap between ASP.NET and your traditional desktop technologies.

  • It is somewhat cross platform (Windows (Mobile), Mac)
  • The runtime is a subset of the .NET stack, so it is much smaller
  • Deployment is made easier by smaller deployment packages
  • It offers rich UI capabilities
  • But being a web technology, security is an issue: you remain sandboxed, and only have limited control over the host

Recently, Microsoft has made strides to provide more control to Silverlight applications running out of browser (PInvoke support for unmanaged code, Office integration, access to COM, support for peripherals, ...). With all this it would seem like there is little stopping them from including database support. It could make sense in an out of browser scenario, and wouldn't be any more of a security risk as running any other application you just downloaded.

However being built on the web paradigm, your data usually comes from the net. So this might be the reason for their reluctance to include it...

I guess, in the end, it is debatable.

Upvotes: 4

TimC
TimC

Reputation: 1061

If you want to use a db with silverlight then check out Jeffrey Richters Sterling DB for silverlight and WP7: http://wintellect.com/powerthreading.aspx

If your talking Sql Server, then they did make a version of silverlight that supports it. Its called WPF :)

Upvotes: 0

bartosz.lipinski
bartosz.lipinski

Reputation: 2677

It would be a big security issue. Imagine calling your database from javascript. Even without this you need to be careful about XSS.

Another reason is that they are just forcing you to separate you BLL so you application is fallowing common patterns.

Upvotes: 6

Matías Fidemraizer
Matías Fidemraizer

Reputation: 64943

Silverlight works with a stripped version of .NET Framework, which is limited to the core class library - with limitations -, multimedia management and WCF/networking client library and not so more.

That's because Silverlight is a browser plug-in, and its runtime must remain as small as possible because web audience won't want to download a 30MB plug-in in order to view a web page - and, after all, this would go against web paradigm -.

Upvotes: 1

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