title: What are the limitations of Loose XAML?
body: <p>I have been experimenting with WPF and rendering strict XAML markup in a web browser, also known as Loose XAML (explained <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2005/09/21/472659.aspx" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a> and <a href="http://michaelbraude.com/index.php?XML/Projects/XAMLXSLT/XAMLXSLT_page1.xml" rel="nofollow noreferrer">here</a>).</p>
  
  <p>It strikes me as mostly useful for displaying static content.  However, it also appears possible to bind to an XML data provider.  </p>
  
  <p>Loose XAML files are not compiled with an application, which creates the following limitations:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>They do not allow external assemblies</li>
  <li>No use of classes, code-behind (or any C#)</li>
  <li>No two-way databinding</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What additional limitations are there?</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>I have not found a way to databind to a database provider (SQL Server)</li>
  <li>Is the .NET Framework required on the client machine in order to render the XAML in the browser?</li>
  <li>Are Search Engines able to interrogate Loose XAML to appropriately rank the
  pages?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>EDIT:  I have attempted to bind the XML data provider to a web service (using <a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/dotnet/howto-wpf_xaml.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this</a> simple example) and have not been successful.  These findings lead me to further research where I found that this is not supported: "The XMLDataProvider is designed to be read-only (in other words, it doesn't provide the ability to commit changes), and it isn't able to deal with XML data that may come from other sources (such as a database record, a web service message, and so on)." -Matthew MacDonald, <em>Pro WPF</em></p>