LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–November 2011

A couple months ago I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, and sites popping up. If you missed those rollups you can check them out here, lot of great content and exciting events happened:

• LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–September 2011
• LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–October 2011

Here’s a rollup of LightSwitch goodies for November:

“LightSwitch Star” Contest

Do you have what it takes to be a LightSwitch Star? Show us your coolest, most productive, LightSwitch business application and you could win a Laptop and other great prizes!

Last month The Code Project launched the “LightSwitch Star” contest. You just answer some questions and email them a screenshot or two. They’re looking for apps that show off the most productivity in a business as well as apps that use extensions in a unique, innovative way. Check out the contest page on The Code Project for details.

There were some really cool applications submitted in November! Some were real production apps and some were samples/tutorials. Here’s a breakdown of what was submitted. Vote for your favorites! Prizes are given away each month.

6 Production Apps

• Church+ - Church+ is a comprehensive, extensive and integrated church management application
• Engineering App - A business application for a structural and architectural engineering company
• Favourite Food App - The app was created to help remember favourite food
• LightSwitch Timetable Management Application - A LightSwitch application used to manage the resources needed to build university timetables
• PTA LightSwitch - A LightSwitch application manages student, parent, and staff information
• Security Central - Security Central is a role based application designed for Corporate Legal and Physical Security Departments

7 Tutorials/Samples

• Acquiring images from scanners and Webcams in Visual Studio LightSwitch
• How to integrate Usercontrols in LightSwitch Application
• LightSwitch: Integrating The ComponentOne Scheduler
• LightSwitch Online Ordering System
• Manage existing users and roles using a LightSwitch application
• Migrating Access To LightSwitch
• Using Silverlight Pie Charts in Visual Studio LightSwitch
  

LightSwitch Developer Center: Free Video Training from Pluralsight

We added over an hour and a half of video training to the Developer Center “How Do I” video page graciously donated by Pluralsight!  Check out the modules we added:

• 1. Introduction to Visual Studio LightSwitch
• 2. Working with Data
• 3. Working with Screens

We also updated the essential learning topics with new content and organized the learning sections better so have a look at all the new training available on the LightSwitch Developer Center! 

Notable Content this Month

Here’s some more of the fun things the team and community released in November.

Extensions released in November (see all 64 of them here!):

• Image Controls for LightSwitch
• LightSwitchHelpWebsite Cache Table Data Source
• Webcam Extension

Build your own extensions by visiting the LightSwitch Extensibility page on the LightSwitch Developer Center.

Team Articles:

• MSDN Magazine November Issue: Deploying LightSwitch Applications to Windows Azure
• Common Validation Rules in LightSwitch Business Applications
• Using the Save and Query Pipeline to “Archive” Deleted Records

Community Content:

• Changing Connection Strings in LightSwitch
• Connecting To A .CSV or Excel File Directly With LightSwitch
• Create a screen which Edit and Add Records in a LightSwitch Application
• How to integrate Usercontrols in LightSwitch Application?
• Native XAML Reporting: Integrating Infragistics Netadvantage Reporting in Visual Studio LightSwitch Applications
• LightSwitch Chat Application Using A Data Source Extension
• Migrating Access to LightSwitch
• Using Visual Studio LightSwitch with MySQL

Samples (see all of them here):

• Common Validation Rules in LightSwitch Business Applications
• How to Open Screen or Entity Designer from Code in LightSwitch with Macro
• How to Set Default Browser for LightSwitch Web Application with Macro

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

The Visual Studio LightSwitch Facebook Page has been increasing in activity lately. Become a fan! Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources.

Also here are some other places you can find the LightSwitch team:

LightSwitch MSDN Forums
LightSwitch Developer Center
LightSwitch Team Blog
LightSwitch on Twitter (@VSLightSwitch, #VisualStudio #LightSwitch)

Join Us!

The community has been using the hash tag #LightSwitch on twitter when posting stuff so it’s easier for me to catch it. Join the conversation! And if I missed anything please add a comment to the bottom of this post and let us know!

Enjoy!