Are Silverlight and Flex equivalent on communicating with server side components

[FrancescoSozzi]

Hi all,

I am a beginer on ArcGis Server web based application and I have to decide which of the API option (Silverlight or Flex best fits on my need). I have to present my decision to customer and I dont want to tell wrong things.

My app specifications require me to program both typical gis user interface functions (zoom, pan, adding layers, etc...) and basic database CRUD (create, read, update, delete) functions (on data not directly related to gis).
I am particulary concerned about CRUD operation, where I have no help from ESRI API.
Well.. I have a bit of experience on Silverlight and I know that it is very easy to build web services (for CRUD) running at server side to be called and used directly inside Silverlight running on a remore client machine.
But Flex?... Is it possible to do the same with Flex?
In any case... I think that Silverlight is the best choice for comunicating with server side processes. Am I right?... Or Silverlight and Flex are totally equivalent also on that?...

Best regards

Francesco

[JenniferNery]

This Q&A might help: http://events.esri.com/uc/QandA/index.cfm?fuseaction=answer&conferenceId=DD02CFE7-1422-2418-7F271831...

I think if you are a .NET developer, you would feel most comfortable using ArcGIS API for Silverlight.

About your concerns for doing CRUD operations with Silverlight and Flex (google is your friend here 🙂 )
http://mscoder.wordpress.com/2010/07/11/datagrid-binding-and-crud-operations-in-silverlight-4-using-...
http://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/Flex/CRUD+-+Dynamic

[dotMorten_esri]

The Silverlight and Flex APIs (and JavaScript for that matter) all use the exact same way of interacting with the server across the board (including CRUD), so you shouldn't see any difference there.
How it's done on the API end of it is slightly different. SL has full tracking of the graphics, so if you change/delete/add a graphic, the API automatically detects it and saves it to the server whereas Flex I believe its a more explicit operation (of course this behavior can be disabled in SL)