.NET developers who know Silverlight might imagine that they can't take advantage of Google App Engine, which uses Python. But integrating the two environments is a lot easier than you think. Scott Seely, author of Effective REST Services via .NET, shows how to do it.
Programming with interoperable, human-readable protocols opens up lots of integration opportunities. The human-readable part is really important. People understand strings really well, which is why JSON and XML became so pervasive. Most languages and platforms have ways to process these text-based formats.
Why would I focus on interoperability as the first topic in an article about Silverlight and Google Application Engine (GAE)? I have talked to people about work I've done creating a GAE-based backend for Silverlight applications. In general, they seem surprised that a Google-based framework happily supports Silverlight. Google didn't do anything special to make this happen. Neither did Microsoft. Instead, both companies support various web and other open standards. Because of that choice, everything else just works.
NOTE
Google Application Engine is Google's cloud computing platform. It offers services for hosting web applications, storing data, and running worker tasks.
Silverlight is Microsoft's .NET-based Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform, which allows .NET developers to leverage their .NET skills within the browser.
As a demonstration of interoperability between GAE and Silverlight, I built a type of application that we've all seen at some point: a photo-management tool. The tool itself is simple. It allows the user to upload and delete images. For existing images, the user can add information about the picture: a caption and a description. Finally, users can choose to expose the image to everyone or just to themselves. To use the tool, users sign in. They manage their photos through a Silverlight interface.
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