Silverlight or MVC 2 (or MVC 3?) for my business app?

Is Silverlight a good choice to use to develop an in-house app ERP business app? Or would MVC be a better choice?

The app would have to include orders processing, pick lists, accounting, purchasing, r开发者_StackOverflow中文版eporting, etc.

You need to ask yourself (and perhaps your client) a couple of questions:

What are your users used to?

What are your users expecting?

If you are replacing a desktop application then Silverlight might be the better choice as it replicates more closely the desktop "experience".

If you are replacing a web site/intranet application then MVC might be the better choice.

The choice between the two will depend on your requirements and your client(s) expectations.

ASP.NET MVC may be perfectly suitable for you if your clients can accommodate the limitations of a web-based application. AJAX and other techniques can be used to make a web-based app "feel" like a locally-installed application.

As it happens, I am writing an ERP system in Silverlight at the moment. The target clients are accustomed to "fat-client" applications that are capable of opening multiple windows at a time. They are generally non-technical and are amenable to installing the Silverlight runtime. That and the need for fast, responsive UI drove the selection of Silverlight.