Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich internet applications, with features and purposes

similar to those of Adobe Flash. The run-time environment for Silverlight is available as a plug-in for most web browsers. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, current versions support multimedia, graphics and animation, and give developers support for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight is also one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone 7. By mid 2011 Microsoft will have released 5 versions over the course of 4 years: the first version was released in 2007; the current version, 4, was released in April 2010 and the 5th version is scheduled for release in the second half of 2011.[3] It is compatible with multiple web browsers used on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. Mobile devices, starting with Windows Phone 7 and Symbian (Series 60) phones, were expected to be supported in 2010. Silverlight supports the display of high-definition video files, and importantly, Microsoft will do the heavy lifting of sending them over the Net. Streaming large media files is expensive, but Microsoft will (optionally) host Silverlight media files and applications. This will enable smaller developers to deliver large and high-definition files quickly and reliably, without paying content distribution network fees. Microsoft is promising reliable 700kbps throughput for media files, and free distribution of all content on its network for one year. After that, distribution will continue to be free up to 1 million streamed minutes a month. Fees after that have not been set. Effects : Microsoft Silverlight played an influential role by providing live on-demand video streaming of the Democratic National Convention and the Olympics on the Internet. Features: Microsoft Silverlight has a Deep Zoom feature, which allows you to keep zooming in on the picture without distorting it. Considerations:Netflix uses Microsoft Silverlight to deliver on-demand movies via the Internet to its customers. Some customers had complained the streaming video was choppy and grainy. Microsoft fixed this problem by releasing an upgrade. Function: Microsoft Silverlight allows you to create and deliver content to mobile devices.

Significance: Microsoft Silverlight delivers high-definition video and rich interactive applications on multiple platforms, including Windows, MAC and Linux. Famous Ties:Microsoft has collaborated with CBS and the National Collegiate Athletic Association to stream video of the March Madness basketball championship.

New features in Silverlight 4 include

1. Support for Google's Chrome browser. 2. Web cam and microphone support.,Printing support.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

Improved mouse support including right button support and mouse wheel support. New notification support to display messages to end users. New and enhanced controls such as a RichTextBox and an enhanced DataGrid control. New support for implicit theming of controls. New hosted browser support for rendering HTML inside Silverlight. WCF data layer enhancements.

9. Localization enhancements with bi-directional text. 10. Support for Managed Extensibility Framework. 11. Enhanced data binding support. Enhanced animation effects. 12. Clipboard and drag and drop support, Deep Zoom performance enhancements. 13. WCF Rich internet application (RIA) Services. 14. Content protection for H.264 and support for playing offline DRM protected media.

Silverlight 5
On December 2, 2010 at the Silverlight Firestarter event, Silverlight 5 beta was announced for release in the 1st half of 2011. The final release is planned for the 2nd half of 2011. New features in Silverlight 5
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Supports GPU accelerated video decoding Built-in 3D graphics support (not to be confused with stereoscopic 3D) Variable speed playback of media content with automatic audio pitch correction Improved power awareness, Built-in remote-control support Supports faster application startup, Provides 64-bit browser support Automated UI testing support for applications with Visual Studio 2010 Delivers improved text clarity Developers can now debug data-binding expressions, set breakpoints on bindings. WCF RIA Services improvements include complex type support and better MVVM support.

WCF
Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) is a framework for building service-oriented applications. Using WCF, you can send data as asynchronous messages from one service endpoint to another WCF is meant for design and deploying distributed applications under SOA implementation. WCF is designed in Service-oriented architecture service oriented architecture principles to support distributed computing where services are consumed by consumers. Clients can consume multiple services and services can be consumed by multiple clients. Services are loosely coupled to each other. Services typically have a WSDL interface (Web Services Description Language) that any WCF client can use to consume the service, regardless of which platform the service is hosted on. WCF implements many advanced Web services (WS) standards such as WS-Addressing, WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Security. With the release of .NET Framework 4.0, WCF also provides RSS Syndication Services. Example suppose that a car rental firm decides to create a new application for reserving cars. Since this application will run on Windows, the firm chooses to build it on version 2.0 of the .NET Framework. The architects of this rental car reservation application know that the business logic it implements will need to be accessible by other software running both inside and outside their company. Accordingly, it's decided to build it in a service-oriented style, with the application's logic exposed to other software through a welldefined set of services. To implement these services, and thus communicate with other software, the new application will use WCF.

Over its lifetime, the rental car reservation application will likely be accessed by a range of other applications. The rental car reservation application is designed assuming that it's business logic will be accessed, as shown in the figure above, by three other kinds of software.

1. A call center client application running on Windows desktops that will be used by employees in
the organization's call center. Created specifically for the new reservations system, this application will also be built using the .NET Framework and WCF. (In some sense, this application isn't truly distinct from the new rental car reservation application, since its only purpose is to act as a client for the new system. Still, from a service-oriented perspective, it's just another client for the reservation system's business logic.)

2. An existing reservation application built on a J2EE server running on a non-Windows system.

Due to a recent merger with another car rental firm, this existing system must be able to access the new application's logic to provide customers of the merged firms with a unified experience. Partner applications running on a variety of platforms, each located within a company that has a business arrangement with the car rental firm. Partners might include travel agencies, airlines and others that have a business requirement to make car rental reservations. The diverse communication requirements for the new rental car reservation application aren't simple. For interactions with the call center client application, for instance, performance is paramount, while interoperability is straightforward, since both are built on the .NET Framework. For communication with the existing J2EE-based reservation application and with the diverse partner applications, however, interoperability becomes the highest goal. The security requirements are also quite different, varying across local Windows-based applications, a J2EE-based application running on another operating system, and a variety of partner applications coming in across the Internet.

Interoperability
WCF supports interoperability with WCF applications running on the same Windows machine or WCF running on a different Windows machines or standard Web services built on platforms such as Java running on Windows or other operating systems. WCF does not only support SOAP messages, it can also be configured to support standard XML data that is not wrapped in SOAP, or can even be used to support formats such as RSS, or JSON that makes WCF flexible for current requirements and future changes.[4]

WPF
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides developers with a unified programming model for building rich Windows smart client user experiences that incorporate UI, media, and documents. " WPF provides types and services that are collectively known as the application model. The application model supports the development of both standalone and browser-hosted applications. The core of WPF is a resolution-independent and vector-based rendering engine that is built to take advantage of modern graphics hardware. WPF extends the core with a comprehensive set of applicationdevelopment features that include Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML), controls, data binding, layout, 2-D and 3-D graphics, animation, styles, templates, documents, media, text, and typography. WPF is included in the Microsoft .NET Framework, so you can build applications that incorporate other elements of the .NET Framework class library. Direct3D : Graphics, including desktop items like windows, are rendered using Direct3D. This provides an avenue for displaying more complex graphics and custom themes, at the cost of GDI's wider range of support and uniform control theming. Media Services

The WPF provides an integrated system for building user interfaces with common media elements like vector and raster images, audio, and video. WPF also provides an animation system and a 2D/3D rendering system.[7] WPF provides shape primitives for 2D graphics along with a built-in set of brushes, pens, geometries, and transforms. The 3D capabilities in WPF are a subset of the full-feature set provided by Direct3D. However, WPF provides tighter integration with other features like user interfaces, documents, and media. This makes it possible to have 3D user interfaces, 3D documents, or 3D media. There is support for most common image formats: BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, Windows Media Photo, GIF, and ICON. WPF supports the video formats WMV, MPEG and some AVI files by default, but since it has Windows Media Player running beneath, WPF can use all the codecs installed for it.

Animations

WPF supports time-based animations, in contrast to the frame-based approach. This decouples the speed of the animation from how the system is performing. WPF supports low level animation via timers and higher level abstractions of animations via the Animation classes.

Imaging

WPF can natively access Windows Imaging Component (WIC) code and APIs allowing developers to write image codecs for their specific image file formats.

Interoperability

WPF provides interoperability with the Windows API: Via hosting, one can use Windows Presentation Foundation inside existing Win32 code[citation needed], or one can use existing Win32 code inside Windows Presentation Foundation.[14] Interoperability with Windows Forms is also possible through the use of the ElementHost and WindowsFormsHost classes.

Microsoft Silverlight is a web-based subset of WPF that enables Flash-like web and mobile applications with the same programming model as .NET applications. 3D features are not supported, but XPS and vectorbased drawing are included.

LINQ
LINQ is an acronym for the Language Integrated Query which was released in year 2007 as a part of .NET framework 3.5. It makes possible to query data in .NET supported languages. It defines a set of Standard Query Operators that will make it possible to get the data on several sources. There is an API named as Standard Query Operator API, which defines the query operators. Select, where and Select Many are some of the frequently used ones among them. SQL syntax provides a short hand method for invocation.

What LINQ Can Do More Than SQL?

Structured Query Language is designed for the purposes of querying data, updating, deleting or inserting from a database. What LINQ can do when compared to the SQL is very much. The users can call to several data sources not only a database, by using LINQ. It can take a single enumeration by calling to a database as well as a file system. Most important advantage of LINQ is the reduction of the code length. When executing a large query the length of SQL code is very much larger when comparing to the Method Based Query in LINQ.

When Not to Use LINQ

LINQ is a good implementation that could help lot of areas in a very convenient manner. In most of the LINQ make things much easy than the others. But using LINQ for small SQL queries might not be suitable at all. In addition when working with LINQ to XML, one of the major concerns should be avoiding the Denial of Service attacks.