How robust is the Project Silk type architecture for data heavy LOB apps?

Question

Project Silk looks good for social networking applications where there are streams of frequently updated data that need to appear in a dashboard style presentation.

I would like to ask if such an architecture also is appropriate for typical LOB apps that are data-heavy. Currently, we use WPF or Silverlight for rich client presentation (tabs of master/detail forms, Office Ribbon styles, drag and drop, grids, charts). Project Silk seems to open up another option for such apps.

A few questions I have:

• Are the technologies used in this stack mature enough for consideration for enterprise use?

• Is the breadth of current and upcoming JQuery UI widgets enough to cover these needs?

• Will this architecture be performant running in interpreted mode on a browser instead of fully utilizing CPU power as native apps do?

Answer 1

Are the technologies used in this stack mature enough for consideration for enterprise use?

jQuery, asp.net mvc 3, html 5, css 3 are mature and works ok for enterprise use. There are some differences depending on the browser used. This is a big issue.

Is the breadth of current and upcoming JQuery UI widgets enough to cover these needs?

No. Silverlight/wpf is much more "stable". The UI box model is excellent. Silverlight/wpf is also more "solid" as it is compiled and can be fully tested.

Will this architecture be performant running in interpreted mode on a browser instead of fully utilizing CPU power as native apps do?

It will be performant, but not as performant as a native app or a silverlight/wpf app which is compiled on the customer's computer.