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LightSwitch allows you to connect to multiple data sources, relate them together, and create screens to edit the data. These data sources can be a variety of databases like SQL Server and SQL Azure, SharePoint, and custom RIA services. With the release of Visual Studio 11 Beta , the next version of LightSwitch...

One of the design goals for LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 was to modernize the look and feel of the UI. Back in March the team released the beta of the LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme . This theme and shell provides a bunch of improvements over the default one like displaying a logo at the...

Last Fall I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, samples and extensions popping up around Visual Studio LightSwitch . If you missed those rollups you can check them all out here: LightSwitch Community & Content Rollups April continued to roll out content around Visual...

Note: This information applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 (LightSwitch V2) In business applications sometimes we need to flag records with additional attributes in response to business rules and then consistently filter those flagged records in some way or another throughout the application....

Note: This article applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta (LightSwitch V2) In Visual Studio LightSwitch , when you design your data model through the Data Designer you are either creating new tables or attaching to external data sources. When you create new tables, LightSwitch automatically...

Note: This information applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta ONLY (LightSwitch V2). For information on deploying LightSwitch applications built with Visual Studio 2010 (LightSwitch V1), please see: Deployment Guide: How to Configure a Web Server to Host LightSwitch Applications In my last post...

If you haven’t noticed the LightSwitch team has been releasing a lot of good content around the next version of LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 . We’ve created a page on the LightSwitch Developer Center with a list of key Beta resources for you. Check back to the page often as we add more content each...

A lot of folks have asked me for information on how to publish a LightSwitch application to IIS6. With the help of a couple team members we finally got the steps written down. This is a follow up to the detailed IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 deployment guide which you should familiarize yourself with first...

NOTE: This information applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 beta. In the next version of LightSwitch , we’ve added support for OData services , both consuming external services as well as producing services from the LightSwitch middle-tier. The Open Data Protocol (OData) standardizes the way we...

Well I know I’m a little late getting this one out but I’ve been busy travelling all over the world and trying to sell and move out of my house so I apologize, it’s been a busy month! If you missed the previous rollups you can view them here . The big news last week of course was the release of Visual...

NOTE: This information applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 beta. As John announced Wednesday on the LightSwitch Team Blog , the next version of Visual Studio will include LightSwitch right in the box and there are a lot of awesome new features. My personal favorite is the Open Data Protocol...

Often times in business applications we have a lot of information to present on a screen, and depending on the user’s screen resolution that information may scroll off the page. Visual Studio LightSwitch ’s screen templates are set to automatically apply a vertical scrollbar to screens when this happens...

Last Fall I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, samples and extensions popping up around Visual Studio LightSwitch . If you missed those rollups you can check them out here: LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–September 2011 LightSwitch Community & Content...

Very often in business applications we need to validate data through another service. I’m not talking about validating the format of data entered – this is very simple to do in LightSwitch -- I’m talking about validating the meaning of the data. For instance, you may need to validate not just the format...

I had a reader ask a question this week on how to use Visual Studio LightSwitch to open different Edit Detail screens based on the “type” of record. This is a very common thing to do especially for data models that use table inheritance (or sub-tables). For instance say we are building an application...

A common technique on data entry screens is using one “drop down list” (called an auto-complete box in LightSwitch) as a filter into the next. This limits the amount of choices that need to be brought down and guides the user into easily locating values. This technique is also useful if you have cascading...

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and enjoyed some well-deserved time off. I sure did! Now that I’m back in the office I’m a few days overdue for this post so here ya go! A few months ago I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, samples and...

Welcome to Part 6 of the Beginning LightSwitch series ! In parts 1 thru 5 we built an Address Book application and learned all about the major building blocks of a Visual Studio LightSwitch application -- entities, relationships, screens, queries and user permissions. If you missed them: Part 1: What...

Welcome to Part 5 of the Beginning LightSwitch series ! In parts 1 thru 4 we learned about entities, relationships, screens and queries in Visual Studio LightSwitch . If you missed them: Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data Part 2: Feel the Love. Defining Data Relationships Part 3: Screen...

Welcome to Part 4 of the Beginning LightSwitch series ! In part 1, 2 and 3 we learned about entities, relationships and screens in Visual Studio LightSwitch . If you missed them: Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data Part 2: Feel the Love. Defining Data Relationships Part...

Welcome to Part 3 of the Beginning LightSwitch series ! In part 1 and part 2 we learned about entities and relationships in LightSwitch and how to use the Data Designer to define them. If you missed them: Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data Part 2: Feel the Love. Defining Data Relationships...

Welcome to Part 2 of the Beginning LightSwitch series ! In the last post we learned about tables, or entities, in LightSwitch and how to use the Data Designer to define them. If you missed it: Beginning LightSwitch Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data In this article I want to focus on data...

Welcome to Part 1 of the Beginning LightSwitch series ! To get things started, we’re going to begin with one of the most important building blocks of a LightSwitch application, the table . Simply put, a table is a way of organizing data in columns and rows. If you’ve ever used Excel or another spreadsheet...

For the month of December I’m going to write a series of posts aimed at the beginner developer getting up to speed with Visual Studio LightSwitch . At least I’m going to try ;-). It’s been a while since I was a beginner myself and started cobbling lines of code together – in fact...

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...