I'm a React developer for front-end stuff and I've recently been given the task of evaluating whether or not Lightning Out (LO) or Lightning Web Components (LWC) can be used in our React web app for communicating with Salesforce.
We have some users who will not be able to log directly into our Salesforce instance, and so the suggestion of using LO or LWC has been made as a possible alternative.
As a non-Salesforce developer, I have a question which I don't seem to be able to answer easily:
Do either of these offerings from Salesforce come with any extra functionality other than the look-and-feel? What I mean is, if I add something from LO or LWC to a React app, do they have inherent capabilities for communicating with Salesforce to fetch/update data or are they just "dumb" widgets that look like Salesforce-native widgets?
Are there any advantages to using LO or LWC over any other UI widget library when it comes to working with Salesforce?
Thanks