Microsoft Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 Integration

02/05/2011 · No Responses

Silverlight is a powerful development platform for creating engaging, interactive user experiences for the Web, desktop, and mobile applications. Integrating Silverlight RIAs in SharePoint 2010 offers amazing opportunities to combine the power and flexibility offered by SharePoint. It is easy to create great user experiences when you have a step-by-step guide to implement Silverlight 4 applications on SharePoint 2010 sites.

This book is not a primer on Silverlight 4 or SharePoint 2010. This book focuses on the integration of Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 and provides step-by-step guidelines for implementing Silverlight RIAs in SharePoint. It is filled with real-world examples that depict the various techniques for interacting with data and services provided by this powerful business collaboration platform, for the enterprise and the Internet. As you sit reading this, you might have already started thinking about the benefits of implementing multiple Silverlight applications in a SharePoint environment. This book will help bring those thoughts to fruition.

This book begins with the fundamental concepts of integrating Silverlight 4 with SharePoint 2010, such as the preparation of the development environment to create applications using Silverlight 4 and the addition of one or more Silverlight RIAs to a SharePoint site. Then, it moves on to the SharePoint Silverlight Client Object Model world, using step-by-step examples to combine a Silverlight application and a SharePoint module. It also covers methods to deploy and debug the Silverlight application while it runs as Silverlight Web Part in a SharePoint page. The book teaches you to take advantage of the new features offered by Visual Studio 2010 to browse SharePoint lists.

Once the reader has control over the SharePoint Silverlight Client Object Model and its asynchronous operations in Silverlight applications, it is time to access external databases through the new Business Connectivity Services (BCS) and interact with workflows. Then, the book explains to perform CRUD operations by consuming the new SharePoint 2010 WCF Data Services in Silverlight. In the end, you’ll learn to utilize Silverlight 4’s rich media features to add effects and interactive animations to images and videos, thus offering the final touches to the Silverlight 4 and SharePoint 2010 integration learning experience.

By the end of this book, you’ll learn to take advantage of the unique features offered by Silverlight in order to create impressive UX that interact with SharePoint 2010.

A hands-on guide packed with real-world examples for integrating your Silverlight 4 applications in a SharePoint 2010 environment.

What you will learn from this book

Develop and host Silverlight Rich Internet Applications in SharePoint 2010 Pages
Deploy and debug a Silverlight RIA included in a SharePoint solution by using the new SharePoint deployment features offered by Visual Studio 2010
Take advantage of Silverlight 4 features to create rich UX for SharePoint solutions
Work with asynchronous SharePoint requests and queries, and debug their execution
Retrieve information from SharePoint lists, workflows, and libraries
Use Silverlight applications to read, insert, update, and delete items from SharePoint 2010 lists and external data sources
Combine external data sources in SharePoint 2010 and interact with them through Silverlight
Create Web Parts that host multiple Silverlight applications
Create Visual Web Parts that render Silverlight applications
Consume SharePoint 2010 WCF Data Services in Silverlight applications
Use Silverlight multimedia controls and features to display information to users taking advantage of the processing power offered by their client computers
Enhance the responsiveness offered by SharePoint 2010 Visual Web Parts by transforming them into Silverlight Rich Internet Applications

Approach
This is a practical book with step-by-step guidelines to integrate Silverlight 4 applications in a SharePoint 2010 Server environment. This book focuses on the integration of the two technologies and is not a primer for any of the individual technologies. It offers clear examples to successfully perform the most important integration tasks.

Who this book is written for
If you are an application developer who wants to implement Silverlight 4 applications within a SharePoint 2010 environment, this book is for you. We assume that the reader has prior knowledge of Silverlight and SharePoint 2010 and this book focuses more on the integration of Silverlight with SharePoint 2010.