Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008 - (Page 10)

Alia Vox by Matt Davey One Perspective on Silverlight IN 2006, MICROSOFT released Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), a graphical subsystem feature of .NET Framework 3.0 that took advantage of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). A year later, Microsoft produced Silverlight, their answer to Adobe Flex. Silverlight (www.microsoft.com/silverlight) offered a cross-browser cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET-based media experiences and rich interactive applications (RIA) for the Web. Now that WPF and Silverlight have .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Extensible Application Mark-up Language (XAML) as common threads, developers can finally build thin Internet and thick rich-client applications using a common framework and tooling. But how can developers apply these applications to scenarios in the the capital markets industry? Silverlight 1.0 was primarily a media for internal and external clients. The ability to build rich applicaplayer, but from a trading/prime broker- tions in Silverlight for deployment both internally and externally age perspective, it was unimpressive. User will also reduce development and support costs. This will become adoption was limited, with deployments increasingly important in the post-subprime climate, as firms are mostly relegated to corporate websites looking for different ways to improve efficiency and decrease costs. and trading research pages. However, the Based on the release of WPF, Microsoft was also able to identify 2.0 release of Silverlight will give financial areas within Silverlight 2.0 to improve. For example, a DataGrid will institutions the prospect of delivering full- be delivered with Silverlight 2.0, whereas WPF did not originally featured, desktop-quality applications include one (later resolved with WPF 3.5 SP1). through the browser. Silverlight 2.0 offers By late 2008, we will expect to see both Adobe Flash and a number of compelling benefits in the Microsoft Silverlight as standard plug-ins within corporate browsers. development of RIAs: With a zero-touch deployment model for Silverlight 2.0, it’s also likely to drive significant inroads into the usage of Microsoft’s ClickOnce • Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR). deployment model—the utility of which will only remain for the • Rich User Interface control model deployment of extremely rich heavyweight WPF applications within based on WPF. the enterprise, although this scenario will become less prevalent • Rich base class library—Silverlight 2.0 includes a rich .NET base class given the increasing sophistication in the RIA space. library of functionality (collections, Trading websites specific to financial institutions are primarily IO, generics, threading, globalizabuilt using thin-client technology (ASP.NET) and typically offer tion, XML, local storage, etc.). fairly minimal trade entry, portfolio views, reporting, and market • Support for LINQ. data facilities. Applying Silverlight 2.0 to these sites will enable • Improved networking stack support— out of the box support for calling organizations to improve customer offerings in two critical ways. REST, WS*/SOAP, POX, RSS, and An application model can easily externalize what institutions can standard HTTP services. offer clients, while increasing breadth of products and trading • Rich Visual Studio 2008 IDE support. options. Also, new visual user experience paradigms, made possiWith constant threats from Adobe and ble by using XAML styles and templates, will increasingly replace Google in the RIA space, Microsoft has trading applications that are flat and two-dimensional. positioned Silverlight as the next generaOn the other hand, Silverlight 2.0 can drastically improve its tion application. The UI Framework in COMET support, an application architecture where a web server Silverlight 2.0 is a compatible subset of sends data asynchronously to a browser (or other client program) the WPF UI Framework features in the without the need for an explicit request. COMET support is essenfull .NET Framework, enabling develop- tial for live market-data delivery; however, a number of financial ers to reuse skills, controls, code, and applications use competing tools such as Liberator, Lightstreamer, content to build rich cross-browser web or the nearly released Kaazing technology. Because all three soluapplications. The enhancement to tions are built in Java using streaming AJAX-to-browser RIA soluSilverlight finally allows Microsoft to offer tions, Microsoft could consider implementing COMET support and desktop-rich applications within a integrating it within Silverlight to provide a complete Web 2.0 archibrowser. In addition, RIA’s offer corpora- tecture or front-to-back Microsoft RIA solution. tions the ability to break away from the Silverlight is possibly the most interesting web technology to dual UI development track—Windows- come out of Microsoft in many years and is anticipated to drive draForms for the desktop, ASP.NET for the matic growth in a new category of financial applications. The only Internet—that is currently followed when real question is whether Microsoft can unlock Silverlight’s true deploying identical trading functionality potential in time to beat Adobe and Google in this race. DDJ Matt is director of technology for Lab49 (www.lab49.com), a company that builds advanced technology applications for the financial-services industry. You can read his blog at https://mdavey.wordpress.com. 10 Microsoft has positioned Silverlight as the next generation application Dr. Dobb’s Journal l www.ddj.com l August 2008 http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight http://www.lab49.com https://mdavey.wordpress.com http://www.ddj.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008

Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008 Contents Friday Night Fish Fry Alia Vox Developer Diaries Developer’s Notebook A Conversation with Christos Papadimitriou OpenGL and Mobile Devices: Round 2 Ellipse Specification Using Vectors Embed Custom GUIs in WPF Building RIAs on J2EE Foundations Disentangling Concepts in Object-Oriented Systems The Agile Edge Effective Concurrency Swaine’s Flames

Dr. Dobb's Journal - August 2008

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