MDS and Silverlight

Question

When will Silverlight be removed as a requirement for MDS WebUI? 

And if there are no plans for removing this requirement, what can be a good alternative for using MDS?

Answer 1

When will Silverlight be removed as a requirement for MDS WebUI? 

And if there are no plans for removing this requirement, what can be a good alternative for using MDS?

Edge is not supporting Silverlight, but should be the future browser. Pretty funny.

In an bigger organization it´s a big problem why we have to install Silverlight, only to use MDS. Please change the Coding and switch to HTML5 or other technology for frontend interaction.

Thanks

Answer 2

Not only that, If you install excel add-in. It requires Visual Studio 2010 runtime...

I guess this MDS will be another silverlight, and die soon

Answer 3

I'd really like answers to both of these questions as well.  MDS is a great solution but I'm concerned Microsoft is going to abandon it and push everyone to PowerApps.  There has to be a legitimate on-premise solution.

Answer 4

My understanding is that there aren't any planned enhancements for MDS in the near future. There were a number of updates in 2016, but it was unchanged in 2017, and I don't think you'll see anything soon beyond security patches and bug fixes. I'm surprised Microsoft has left this gap in their platform for this long.

The only solution I'm aware of that you can easily transition to is Profisee, which was formed by the original founders/developers of Stratature, which was acquired by MS and whose software ultimately became MDS. So Profisee's platform is very similar to MDS in many ways. Full disclosure, I'm head of product at Profisee, and have been working with MDS for over 10 years (since it's "bulldog" alpha release back in 2008).

-Eric

Answer 5

Just to add a closure to this thread, MDS is upgraded to HTML5 in SQL Server 2019.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/what-s-new-in-sql-server-ver15?view=sql-server-ver15#section