LightSwitch: A new RAD IDE from Microsoft

Microsoft has released its latest development tool, Visual Studio LightSwitch. LightSwitch is aimed at application developers who want to build applications rapidly. I personally think this is a good application for freelance developers who are looking to develop applications in record times.

This super fast development ability of Lightswitch is provided by including a variety of prebuilt templates and tools to build business applications that target Windows Client or Windows Azure. LightSwitch simplifies attaching to data with data source wizards or creating data tables with table designers.It also includes screen templates for common tasks so you can create clean interfaces for your applications without being a designer.

In addition, LightSwitch users can build forms from existing templates and populate them with data from data sources including SQL Server, SQL Azure, SharePoint and others. There also is integrated support for working with Microsoft Office for tasks such as exporting data to Excel without having to write any code.

The LightSwitch Starter Kits help users jump-start their development with basic project templates for common business needs (e.g. Starter Kits for budget management, expense tracking, customer service, issue tracking, job candidate tracking, performance reviews, status reports and time tracking).

LightSwitch applications can be taken to the cloud by publishing to Azure directly from the IDE. You don’t need to rewrite your application; simply change the target environment, follow the steps and then your application is published to Azure.

To get started building with LightSwitch, refer to the following website:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/lightswitch

More Details:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jasonz/archive/2011/07/26/visual-studio-lightswitch-2011-is-available-today.aspx

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/somasegar/archive/2010/08/03/introducing-visual-studio-lightswitch.aspx

Kunal Chowdhury, an MVP from India has created an eBook on LightSwitch to get your started in a jiffy. Get the eBook from here (USD 0.99 or INR 45):

http://www.kunal-chowdhury.com/2011/07/e-book-published-beginners-guide-to.html

Go ahead and switch on the light switch – Let there be applications!

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