Once again,
Daniel Lehenbauer saved my day.
After
my post yesterday
about XBAP and EXE applications, I sent him an email
asking for his opinion. He was very fast and I got the answer today. Daniel
pointed me to
this page,
which describes pretty exactly what I wanted, and which comes to the same
conclusions as I did: As long as the navigation model and the security permissions
allow, switching back and forth is rather easy.
Note the use of
compilation switches and of runtime checks to see if the application
runs in XBAP or EXE mode. This allows to take different actions, and to optimize
both modes.
I also found
this presentation from TechEd 06,
which explain very well the permission system in XBAP applications, and how to
code to avoid nasty surprises during execution.
Of course all this is possible only if you design your application accordingly,
and in advance. It's still unclear if we will follow this variant or not, but at
least we have a more solid basis to move forward.