Rants Tagged with “Silverlight 2”
It has come to my attention that my current examples using ADO.NET Data Services are performing very badly. I was using that example as anecdotal evidence that Data Services performed slower than the Web Service counterparts. I don't think this is accurate. I am working on some performance comparisons that I will share on my blog once Silverlight 2 goes into a full release so I can be sure that the numbers reflect a real-world release.
The issue seems to surround a bone-headed query I was making:
var qry = from p in TheContext.Products.Expand("Supplier").Expand("Category")
orderby p.ProductName
select p;
This means for every product I was retrieving its related Category and Supplier. The problem is that I was duplicating this data (since some products shared Categories and Suppliers). Not efficient at all.
When I re-release these examples when Silverlight 2 ships, I will be hosting the examples on CodePlex. Watch here for announcements on the release of the code, new versions of the examples as well as the performance comparisons coming soon.
I was crufting up a sample LINQ to JSON example today to post in my blog but something odd happened. I couldn't find a public service that both used JSON and supports a security policy file. Let me clarify that.
In Silverlight (like Flash/Flex), in order to make calls to external domains, that domain must support a security policy file. Flash defines one format and Silverlight another, though Silverlight supports the Flash format (for the most part). So if a domain has allowed Flash to access its site, Silverlight should be able to. Great...right?
I could have crafted up an example of writing your own service that exposed JSON (pretty easy in .NET 3.5 and WCF), but that's not the point. If I was going to expose a service, why would I choose JSON if Silverlight is the only client? Its not significantly smaller than XML and the other benefits are not significant enough to bother.
What I thought was a no brainer was to use one of the public API's that support it (e.g. Yahoo Image Search, Google Base, etc.) So far none that I can find support a policy file (Flash's or Silverlight's) so I can't call them. This is similar to the problem with Amazon's S3 lack of policy file support noted by several people (Tim Heuer most notably).
I'd love to finish the example and show it because LINQ to SQL is cool, but until I find a compelling public API, I won't bother...its just not that important. If any of my readers know of one (or think one might work), let me know and I'll try it out.
Jon Galloway has a great new post on how to get the dev builds of Chrome to see new fixes for Silverlight and Flash. While this is laudable, these new builds still don't show any content (e.g. any of my examples) that use "windowless=true".
I originally thought it was the hosting (silverlight.js which I use extensively instead of object tags or the asp.net control). After looking at the differences, I settled in on the issue which is windowless=true. I expect they'll fix it eventually.
This took me a few days to get around to, but Adam Cooper sent me a link to his utility class for supporting the scroll wheel in ScrollViewers the other day. I am very impressed by it so far and wanted to share it with all my Silverlight 2 readers!
I just got back from the Silverlight 2 Firestarter in New York City. I had a great time. We have a good turn-out and great discussions about the technology. The Microsoft guys that set this up were just great, especially Peter Laudati who organized the whole thing and made my short trip up there really simple and fun.
For the attendees of the talks, here's a link to the example project I built for you:
Much has been made in the blogosphere about the recent announcement that the NBC/NFL deal. NBC announced recently that they would be showing their live NFL games over the web via Flash versus Silverlight. I've heard a lot of hyperbole on both sides about why this happened. I am deferring to something who I think actually doesn't have a horse in this race, an online video business analyst:
To quote him (if you haven't clicked over yet):
It's a shame that in our industry, some bloggers are more concerned with writing a headline just for drama sake, as opposed to actually getting the details right. In the past few days, at least half a dozen sites said that NBC was "dropping", "dumping" or "ditching" Silverlight in favor or Flash for streaming of football games on NBCSports and NFL.com....Problem is, none of this is true.
As far as I can tell, the decision was a business decision and not a technical decision. Let's try and be honest and not religious about this. Both Silverlight and Flash are great technologies. As someone who has invested a lot of time and money in Silverlight, I'd like it to do well but I could never say that it is superior in every way to Flash/Flex...because that just isn't true. Hopefully pundits on both sides can do the same.
In fact, I am of the opinion that the best thing to happen to Flash developers was Silverlight. Huh? Yeah! The reason this was so good for Flash is it forced Adobe to start paying attention again. Competition is good for everyone and Adobe is being pushed on both features and price to be competitive with Microsoft. In that ecosystem everyone wins.
To all you New York/New Jersey area Silverlight'ers, I will be in New York twice in the next few weeks:
If you are into Silverlight, this is an opportunity for some good information on Silverlight 2 in your area!
Microsoft launched Project Rosetta today. To quote the site:
Project Rosetta is a site dedicated to helping designers and developers build applications in Silverlight while taking advantage of skills they already know.
It seems like a laudable effort to try and find a place to help people (though the site seems to really be focused on Designers) create great Silverlight 2 applications. Of note, I particularly liked the From Flash to Silverlight article that is up on the site. Let me know what you think!
I've uploaded a new version of my code from my Silverlight 2/Data Services MSDN Article. I took the new Silverlight 2 Data Services client that was released and updated the code example. If you want to get the code, you can download it from my site here:
http://wildermuth.com/downloads/sl2_ds_example.zip
I've also changed and updated the examples (more elaborate versions of the article code) using it on the Silverlight Data site, including both the Entity Framework and the NHibernate examples. Let me know if find any bugs.
As the end of the year is creeping up on us, we are proud to announce our Winter/Spring schedule for the Silverlight Tour. If you are working on next year's training budgets, don't forget to include us now that we have next our Winter/Spring schedule set. Here are the new dates and cities:
- January 5-7th, 2009: Atlanta, GA
- January 19-21st, 2009: San Francisco, CA
- February 16-18th, 2009: Chicago, IL
- March 2-4th, 2009: Seattle, WA
- March 23-25th, 2009: Washington, DC
- April 6-8th, 2009; Denver, CO
- April 27-29th, 2009: Boston, MA
As always our partners also teach the class outside the United States including Latin America, Canada (in English & en French) and in Australia. We are also announcing a new partner soon to teach the class in the United Kingdom! We also offer the workshop as a private class to individual companies.
If you are interested in attending the class and your city is not listed, please feel free to contact us to recommend cities where we might find enough interest to hold the class.
