Summary

Accessing SharePoint data from client-side applications offers possibilities to get around the limitations of sandboxed solutions. The client-side applications can access web services and data sources outside of SharePoint and provide the functionality of other systems working with custom SharePoint solutions.

The SharePoint Client Object Model allows for a consistent way to develop against SharePoint data elements using client-side applications. You have built applications using Silverlight and JavaScript. While these examples only accessed the SharePoint and not external applications, they did demonstrate how simple it is to develop client-side applications using the Client Object Model.