Visual Studio LightSwitch allows developers to quickly create professional, data-centric business applications. It provides pre-configured screen templates and pre-written code to build the basic application functionality faster. LightSwitch applications can access existing data sources like SQL Server and SharePoint. The applications are made up of projects containing data entities, screens, queries, and other resources. Developers can customize and extend LightSwitch applications through code. LightSwitch applications can be deployed to the desktop, browser, or cloud.

1. Turn It On!
Visual Studio LightSwitch
Steve Lange
Sr. Developer Technology Specialist
Microsoft | Developer & Platform Evangelism
stevenl@microsoft.com | blogs.msdn.com/slange | gotteamsystem.com

2. Who The #&@^ Are You?
• Steve Lange
• Sr. Developer Technology Specialist
• Microsoft | Developer & Platform Evangelism
• Field Specialist for Microsoft Development Tools
• Visual Studio Ultimate
• Team Foundation Server
• Test Professional
• Lab Management

3. Agenda
• What is Visual Studio LightSwitch?
• But I’m a REAL Developer!
• Anatomy of a LightSwitch Project
• Creating an Application
• Extending the Application
• Deploying the Application

4. Awesome Disclaimer
• LightSwitch is in Beta 1
• For IIS deployment, currently only
supports IIS 7
• Currently no “go live” license available
• More functionality, templates
available at RTM.

5. What is LightSwitch?
• Quickly create professional-quality, data-centric
business applications
• Build custom applications
• Pre-configured screen templates
• Pre-written code & reusable components
• Deploy to desktop, browser, or cloud
• Easily access existing systems and data
• Build for today, prepare for tomorrow

6. What is LightSwitch?
• Quickly create professional-quality, data-centric
business applications
• Easily access existing systems and data
• Export data to Excel
• Access data sources
• SQL Server
• SQL Azure
• WCF RIA Services
• SharePoint
• Access
• Create your own entities
• Build for today, prepare for tomorrow

7. What is LightSwitch?
• Quickly create professional-quality, data-centric
business applications
• Easily access existing systems and data
• Build for today, prepare for tomorrow
• Full Extensible templates & components
• Build practical & scalable applications
• Host in Azure for future scalability

8. But I’m a REAL Developer!
• Relax.. Take a breath
• Build out basic LOB apps faster
• Redundant stuff is done for you
• Navigation
• Validation
• Relationships
• These apps still need your skills
• Customizations
• Permissions
• Events
• Computed fields

9. ANATOMY OF A LIGHTSWITCHPROJECT
Visual Studio LightSwitch

10. Anatomy of a LightSwitch Project
• Project
• Data & Entities
• Screens
• Queries
• Security
• Debugging & Extensions
• Deployment

11. Projects
• Silverlight
• Just look under the covers

12. Projects
• They’re exactly what you think they are!
• Store and organize pieces of your
application
• Contains data entities, screens, queries
and resources required to build the
application.
• Logical application view by default

13. Data & Entities
• Data Entity - basic model for data
• Tables
• Connect to existing data
• Create new data
• Create entities directly in LightSwitch
• Entity Designer

14. Lots of Places to Write Code
Tables/Entities Queries Screens

15. Screens
• What the user sees
• Specify which data to display
• Specify layout
• New Entity
• Search Data
• Entity Details
• Editable Grid
• List and Details

16. Screens
• Customize screen at either design or run-time
• Navigation & Menus
• Create & reorder menus
• Manage navigation groups

17. Queries
• Work with a subset of data
• Filter, group, sort, add parameters

18. Queries - Extending
• Query Designer is limited
• Can’t reference related entities that have a multiplicity of many
• Doesn’t support operations such as Count(), Aggregate(), or
Sum()

19. Security
• Supports Windows or Forms authentication
• Controls access to screens, queries, entities

20. Debugging & Extensions
• Debugging
• As usual
• Break, pause, continue
• Extensions
• Themes, controls, etc.
• Via VS Extensions Manager

21. Deployment
• Deploy based on application
type
• Desktop client, 2-tier
• App on desktop, direct data
access
• Desktop client, 3-tier
• App on desktop, data access via
IIS
• Browser client, 3-tier
• App in browser, data access via
IIS

22. FLIP THE SWITCH
Building your first LightSwitch Application

23. Let’s Build Something: Scenario
• Simple User Group Manager Application
• Members list resides in SQL Server
• Need to track members & their activities
• Screens
• Member List
• Search

24. Thanks!
“Better to be a geek than an idiot."
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world, those
that understand trinary, those that don't, and
those that confuse it with binary.”

25. Try it!
• Download the Beta
• Get the training kit
• Read the tutorials
• Build something