Microsoft has come out with yet another announcement which was related to the release of Visual Studio LightSwitch. Visual Studio LightSwitch is a recently tool which would simplify the developments of the applications of one’s line of business. This would be down with the help of many shortcuts including templates. This tool is available for Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) subscribers.
In simple words, this tool aims at those developers of business apps who are not well versed with programming. Microsoft claims that no other way would be as simple as with the help of Visual Studio LightSwitch for building business apps which might be for the desktop or cloud. Moving to the cloud is easy as one would just have to publish them on Windows Azure which is LightSwitch IDE.
The senior vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division, S. “Soma” Somasegar blogged last year that this tool comes with a number of tools and templates which are prebuilt. These tools and templates are useful in building those business apps which allows the users to write more codes or less as per their wish, but it should be for the purpose of targeting Windows Azure or Windows Client. Somasegar continued saying that building a number of business apps would be quick and it would begin with just one decision of the user – C# or Visual Basic.
Corporate VP of Microsoft’s Visual Studio Team, Jason Zander had blogged on 26th July that this tool starts with screens and data with which a user usually interacts. Attaching data source wizard to the data is even simplified with this tool and for table designers the creation of data tables one even can feel it is better. There is an inclusion of even templates for screen which can be suitable for regular tasks and therefore one gets a cleaner interface for their apps even though they may not be a designer. For creating basic apps, one can get it done without the need of a line of code. This surely doesn’t mean that one cannot make use of codes. Custom coding is even possible where a user thinks that it would help to resolve their business problems.
Visual Studio LightSwitch has a few starter kits which have important features for its users. These starter kits are helpful as a user can quick start with the developments which are related to the templates of basic projects fulfilling the requirements of business needs commonly. For instance, these kits are for time tracking, status reports, performance reviews, job candidate tracking, issue tracking, customer service, expense tracking and budget management.
Additionally, these users can create forms with the help of the templates which are existing and then fill in the data via SharePoint, SQL Azure, SQL Server and other data sources. One can even make use of support which finds an integration for a user to work with MS Office to carry out tasks such as ‘export to Excel’ which would not require one to write a code.
The time taken is even marginal to disparate these Office tools and data sources for leveraging, deploying and creating these basic business apps. The development of one’s app can be simultaneously done along with modification of the app as its running.