Bing Maps - Javascript vs Silverlight

Currently, I am evaluating the creating of a map based system to plot data. This data would consists of shape layers (a grid - stored in a SQL 2008 Geography column) and multiple points (~5500 initially - Lat/Lon points in the same DB) that will plot the location of items on the grid. So, my question is - is there a large difference between the SilverLight Bing Map implementation and the JavaScript based implementation. Here is what I can gather from my research:

SilverLight Pros

• Can handle large amounts of data more quickly
• API/SDK to tie directly to .NET application code

JavaScript Pros

• Do not have to download/install Silverlight on client side
• Can leverage JQuery or other frameworks to pull data from webservice (I know SL can do this to using WCF, but I know JQuery rather well)

I know from this list that it looks like I should go with Silverlight, however I also have 'NEVER' done a bit of coding using the XAML stuff. Most of my experience as of late is the .NET MVC stuff and I cannot help but to take that into account as well. Does anyone know the performance 'ratio' between SilverLight and Javascript or at what point JavaScript implementation will choke? One more thing, I have looked at the DataConnect project on codeplex, but it seems to be broken - I cannot get the WKT or XAML functions to work either on their live site or the downloaded project.

If anyone out there has done a comparison/has words of wisdom for guidance/can add to my list for either of the two, I am all ears.

EDIT

I found a great Javascript/.NET MVC application example using SQL 2008 on CodePlex - 开发者_运维问答Ajax Map Data Connector. It gives examples of pulling polygons, lines and points of interest from the database, placing them on the map using images tiles or the MS API as well as using intersection to determine items around a point or within a bounded box.

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Personally I prefer the Javascript version because it's more multiplatform (e.g. mobiles) and easy to integrate in a webapp (plus I also love jQuery), but I think the deciding factor is probably what do you want to use the application for ?

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However for Javascript, even if I love version 7, you may want to stick with version 6.3 for now because too many core components were removed (but are planned to be re-added in the future), e.g. infoboxes and client-side clustering (of course you can do your own implementations, that's what I did personally, but I would advise to use 6.3 for now).

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I'd go with the javascript control (better support for multi-devices, is currently being more actively developed than the Silverlight control, sounds better suited to your skill set). However, don't try to plot 5,500 points on it. It will die.

What's more, if you're thinking about plotting 5,500 points then there's something wrong with your application design anyway - an end user is not going to be able to discern that many different points on the map. Let them filter for particular types of points, or only retrieve those that are visible in the current mapview, or use clustering to group up points at higher zoom levels - you should only be looking to have at most maybe 100 - 200 data visible data points on the map at any one time. If you really must plot that many points, then pre-render them as a tile layer and cache this rather than trying to plot dynamic vector data on the map.

And, I disagree with wildpeaks - v 7.0 is the latest stable release of the Bing Maps AJAX platform, and is a major change from v6.3. If you start coding with v6.3 now you'll only have to go through upheaval at a later date when you have to migrate to v7.0. Best to start off with v7.0 than learn a deprecated API.