Silverlight Controls & Silverlight Components / Oracle / SUN (Oracle Tools & Oracle Components)

What is a Silverlight control? A .NET Silverlight control is a Silverlight software component that is utilized in the user interface of a Silverlight based application to allow the end-user to enter data, display data, or interact with the app in some way to control the way the Silverlight app behaves. A Silverlight control is visible and can be seen and interacted with at run-time on their screen, example being a Silverlight list box or combo box that allow users to select items from a drop down list to input data into the Silverlight program.

What is a Silverlight component? A Silverlight component is a special type of Silverlight object in that it may not have a visible interface that the user can see, but runs hidden in the background. For example you can download a Silverlight file upload component from our Silverlight product gallery that allows you to upload files over the Internet using HTTP, you cannot see the interface to this Silverlight component, as it is non-visual.

Silverlight itself is part of the Microsoft .NET Framework and is the latest user interface app platform from Microsoft aimed at Internet developers to use to create dynamic Web sites and corporate Intranets. It can be viewed as a step on from ASP.NET, in as much as it supports multi-media, video, sounds, graphics and animation better than previous Microsoft technologies and thus offers a cross-platform and cross-browser alternative to Flash from Adobe. You can use Silverlight to create Silverlight apps that run on Windows PCs, Macs, Windows Phone 7 devices and some other Symbian based mobile phones.

Silverlight has gone through several developer iterations already: Silverlight 1.0, Silverlight 2.0 & Silverlight 3.0 with Silverlight 4.0 being the latest version released in April, 2010. The latest Silverlight 4 release added support for new Web browsers like Google Chrome and support for local Microsoft Component Object Model objects (also known as COM objects or COM components). There is also an implementation of Silverlight that runs on Linux as a plug-in from Novell, another ComponentSource partner, and this is known as Moonlight, but at present is several versions behind Microsoft and only supports Silverlight 1.0 compatibility.

In this filtered view of our full product catalog, you will find both .NET Silverlight controls and .NET Silverlight components, as well as some Silverlight utilities to help you create your Silverlight app faster. The Silverlight component products listed here are created as third party Silverlight components by software companies specializing in the creation of Silverlight software component products. As such by using a Silverlight library, you are re-using the knowledge and expertise of another Silverlight developer inside your app. For example, by downloading a Silverlight charting control from our Silverlight product gallery, you are able to implement lots of different chart types and graph layouts for your users rapidly, without the support burden falling on you or your team. Or if you need to add a good text editor to your Silverlight app, you will find several Silverlight Rich Text editors to compare, download and review from our Web site.

The selection of Silverlight controls available is growing very fast, so the width and depth of Silverlight products listed here is expanding all the time. To help you keep up to date with this fast moving area, there is a Silverlight News RSS feed for you to subscribe to, with all the latest Silverlight News on product releases.

In this Oracle software product gallery you will find products that are compatible with: Oracle software platforms and frameworks, Oracle databases, Oracle application servers and Oracle Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). Oracle Corporation (ORCL) acquired SUN Microsystems, completing the deal on Jan 27, 2010, plus Oracle had previously acquired BEA Systems completing that deal on Apr 29, 2008. So in this Oracle marketplace, you will also find products that are compatible with SUN Microsystems (JAVA) software products and databases, as well as products that work with BEA Systems (BEAS) software products and BEA application servers.

So you will find: Oracle tools, Oracle utilities, Oracle addins and Oracle db admin tools to help with day to day Oracle database management tasks and common Oracle DBA activities. For Oracle developers you will also find Oracle components, Oracle extensions, Oracle plugins and Oracle developments tools to help make your more productive when writing your next Oracle software project. There are also Oracle components that are available as products to use in your next Oracle app, these Oracle libraries are usually made available as an Oracle Java Class or as an Oracle JavaBean.

The Oracle dev tools can be: searched for on our Web site, evaluated using the Oracle downloads that we have for each product, compared with other Oracle utility or Oracle dev tool products, before you make any purchasing decision. You can also read what your fellow Oracle developers thought about the Oracle tool they downloaded by reading our Oracle reviews. You can also buy, download and license these Oracle tools and Oracle components directly from our Web site.

Finally, we have several Oracle News feeds for each type of Oracle product from the Oracle product range, these News feeds are published as Oracle News pages and also available as Oracle RSS data feeds, so that you can keep up to date with new third party products releases that are compatible with the Oracle software product range.