Pros and Cons for developing GIS functionality in ArcGIS Web API (Silverlight) or ArcGIS for Desktop

Question

I have an application coming together using the ArcGIS Server API for Silverlight. The app, currently, takes in two geometry points from the user and passes the geometry to an ArcGIS Elevation server online to get elevation values. Then the SL client sends the data over to an internal ArcGIS Server to do custom slope calculations and linear referencing on a semi-static polyline with a gp service.

What are pro and con arguments to move the UI from silverlight over to desktop application. Perhaps a C# extension/addin that allows the user to select points similar to how they interact in the web map. And documentation or white papers on the subject. This would be strictly an ArcMap centric dev question.

Now it is an internal app. But deployment issues would be a good topic. As well as maintenance and complexity of development. Any others points would be very welcome as well.

I guess this may not be a strict question to get an answer to maybe it needs to be moved?a

Thanks.

Answer 1

Based on what I'm gathering here, I would have developed the functionality as a geoprocessing service (a GPFunction) that packages your calls to ArcGIS elevation service along with your custom slope calculation, etc.

That way, your UI is extremely lightweight, so it wouldn't matter whether it's silverlight or desktop. It seems like all you'll have is some basemaps and a two point input (which is offered out-of-the-box for ArcMap using a FeatureRecordset in your published geoprocessing task), so you probably won't need any development/deployment on a desktop client. Hope this helps.