Development Speed ​​- Asp.net vs Silverlight

Question

I am trying to evaluate whether we should move from developing our product in ASP.net web forms (current technology) to Silverlight. I remember reading that silverlight development can add to development speed, so for me this is the main way to think about it.

I assume that developing the business logic will take the same amount of time, I am open to it if the speed of developing the user interface brings significant benefits.

The application we have is a business data oriented application. There are not enough rich reports, however, reports with printed data require a lot of formatting (since the application can be configured in terms of data settings, for example, which columns have a combined heading, and then subheadings, which cells display data in red, etc. .). In addition, most user interfaces are Asp.net web pages for data entry.

Do you see any significant improvement that we can achieve by switching to Silverlight? We also need to consider the migration time of the existing user interface and the learning curve, but if that were not a limitation, what would be your opinion?

Answer 1

I could see that you are gaining a lot using Silverlight, especially with the amazing chart controls that are available. This is compounded by how simple RIA services create data-driven applications. However, it really depends on your development team. If they are already familiar with Silverlight, I would go for it, but if they are not careful, then initially it can be slower than if you were working with ASP.Net.

Answer 2

It is neither one nor the other. The Silverlight application can be used in an ASP.NET web form application. That way, you could develop some features using Silverlight, using your existing code base and effort.

Both sides work hand in hand.