Question

I want to understand the differences in applications developing in Sharepoint and Standalone Silverlight application. My application is going to be a dashboard kind of application which some charts and graphs with metrical data.

Can anyone summarize Pros and Cons of developing this application in Sharepoint
and Pros and Cons of developoing this application in Silverlight

Answer 1

SharePoint will give you control on the data itself. You’ll be able to include scenarios involving workflows (e.g. approval) or where access is restricted. For example I worked on a project where the customer had two vendors, and of course he didn’t want vendor two to see vendor one ‘s data on the dashboard.

SharePoint will also give you more rendering options, either html or Silverlight. This will be useful if you need to support a wide range of devices (including mobile).

The cons are the overhead involved with the SharePoint deployment.

As John Saunders said, it is a broad topic and there is no simple answer. One important factor to consider is the size of your project. If you are in a corporate environment involving collaboration, most likely SharePoint will be a good option, either with or without Silverlight.