Lightswitch Silverlight vs html5, javascript performance

Question

hi,

i already read some threads about the performance of lightswitch controls. I already made a few applications and it is really a great tool to build apps quickly, but I think the performance is not the best. Maybe there are some technics to speed up the apps or to use third party controls? I already read in a earlier thread about this. But I did not test and I do not want to buy for each control to get a faster app.

But I read a blog about Lightswitch, odata, datajs, knockoutjs and jquery:

http://lightswitchhelpwebsite.com/Blog/tabid/61/EntryId/128/A-Full-CRUD-DataJs-and-KnockoutJs-LightSwitch-Example-Using-Only-An-Html-Page.aspx

But I do not know how the performance of a site with jquery woud be? It would be interesting to know if somebody already buld a greater app with jquey, kendoui, extjs4 or something else with LS Odata?

And on the other side maybe there will be a hmtl output for Ls, but we do not know.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/LightSwitchDev11Beta/thread/58bb4db9-896a-4232-8a67-3c5044a90f1d

I also have to say, that i am not totaly unhappy with the performance of LS, but I think it could be better.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hey Dragonalw,

I found that the performance of LightSwitch is really great once you deploy the app (true that in debug mode, it could be a bit faster...)

If you have specific performance issues in a deployed LS app, perhaps there's some configuration mistake / abuse of some queries / ... 

As far as the LightSwitch Silverlight client is concerned: it is a very "generic" and "dynamic" client.  Basically, it reads out the metadata and creates all the screens at "runtime" (I described how they do this here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/hh965661.aspx in more detail...)

If you are building a specific client on the LightSwitch OData middle tier (a specific WP7 client, HTML5+javascript/jquery, or a specific SilverLight client) it càn always be faster than the more "generic" standard LightSwitch client (Silverlight).   In fact, unless you're doing additional & heavy graphical computations, a custom client will *always* be faster.  The question is how much faster it would be (= not much), in regards to how much effort it will take (= a LOT)!!

In summary:

The LightSwitch middle tier has very decent performance once you deployed it.

The LightSwitch client has very decent performance, but if performance is your only concern, you càn create a custom client, however ask yourself it it is worth the effort.

my 2 cents :-)

Jan

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