We have a multi user product prototype in WPF which works fine as a prototype. Now we want to build the complete product.
In our product we have scenarios where 2 – 3 users might have to use same data. Say one us editing and the other user is viewing the continuos edits. And also whenever a user changes a common itemm updates should go to all the other users on that same item, and they need to refresh their information. And this should happen without polling continuously.
Is there any advantage of going towards web based product development i.e in Silverlight.
There’s absolutely no architectural advantage to Silverlight over WPF in this situation. Your main advantages for Silverlight would be 1) smaller deployment 2) cross platform and 3) more integrated in-browser experience.
From the developer’s perspective, however, you might actually find WPF better for developing this kind of collaborative application because you have access to a wider array of networking options. Silverlight has limits on what TCP/UDP ports you can access and has no built-in peer to peer networking capabilities like WCF does on the .NET Framework.
In any case, a Silverlight application for all intents and purposes is a client application, not really any more of a web application than WPF except when it comes to deployment.