Before PDC 2009, I had a short wish list for the next version of Silverlight:

1. Real support for commanding
2. Some kind of full trust mode similar to Click Once
3. More complete data binding
4. Context Menus
5. Relational (Isolated) Storage

I was pretty excited as The Gu’s keynote played out and I saw my wish list filled one item at a time.  There are some other things I’d like, but these are things that aren’t in WPF either so I don’t really dare hope for them.  These items include things like adding extensibility to the Binding framework: too many aspects are internal/sealed black boxen.

The missing #5 would probably have involved something like a cross platform SQL Compact.  The ability to drop a small relational store into Isoloated Storage (or anywhere on the file system using elevated trust) would open up a whole new avenue for Silverlight applications.  Even without tools like the Entity Framework this could be huge.

I recalled my Return of the Smart Client article where I expressed what I believe are common concerns and frustrations developers have when building Enterprise applications using the usual web development tools.  If you needed further convincing that Silverlight is a real alternative for creating browser delivered rich internet applications you need only review day two of the PDC 2009 keynote.  Silverlight is as big as anything going on at Microsoft.  I can’t wait for MIX 2010!