Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness

LightSwitch Tips & Tricks on Query Performance

Beth Massi — Tue, 29 May 2012 14:31:00 GMT

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 also allows you to connect data services via OData which are often hosted remotely. When the size of the data in these data sources get too large, or the distance between them increases (i.e. Internet based data services), performance decreases. Contributing factors are the size of the data set coming down the wire is too big, the number of fields to search on in the table is high, or the size of the data in the tables has grown very large.

As the size of data grows and/or the length of the “wire” increases, it’s important to understand the affects these have on query performance. In this post I’d like to discuss some important considerations to make when designing your entities and queries in LightSwitch against large or remote data sets.

Default Searching Behavior

When you design your entities in LightSwitch, by default all string properties are searchable. This means that when displaying data in grids or lists, the search box will execute a query that compares all the string fields in the table for a possible match. For example, say I have a table of customers coming from the AdventureWorksLT database. If I search for “Adam” then all records with any mention of the word “adam” in any of its string fields are displayed.

There are 10 string fields in this table so the WHERE clause on the database query is:

WHERE ([LastName] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([FirstName] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([MiddleName] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([Title] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([Suffix] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([CompanyName] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([SalesPerson] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([EmailAddress] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([Phone] LIKE N'%Adam%') OR ([PasswordHash] LIKE '%Adam%') OR ([PasswordSalt] LIKE '%Adam%')

Similarly, when connecting to OData sources with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11, you can see the query over HTTP to the remote data service. For instance, in the following example I have a search screen for movie & music titles coming from the Netflix OData service, sorted by name. Notice if I search for “Star Wars” that all records with any mention of the phrase “Star Wars” in any of its string fields are displayed.

Here’s the request sent to the OData service. (For more information on the query syntax see the URI conventions supported in OData queries.)

GET http://odata.netflix.com/v2/Catalog/Titles()?$orderby=Name&$filter=substringof('Star%20Wars',Id)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',Name)%20or%20(substringof('Star%20Wars',ShortName)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',Synopsis))%20or%20(substringof('Star%20Wars',ShortSynopsis)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',Url)%20or%20(substringof('Star%20Wars',Rating)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',Type)))%20or%20(substringof('Star%20Wars',WebsiteUrl)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',NetflixApiId)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',TinyUrl))&$skip=0&$top=45&$expand=Movie,Series,Season,Disc&$select=*,Movie/*,Series/*,Season/*,Disc/*

In this case it can take over 15 seconds to display the results depending on my connection speed to this public OData service. We can speed up both of these queries considerably by limiting the number of properties that must be searched. You can do that by opening up the entity in the Data Designer and marking fields “Is Searchable” in the properties window.

You can also uncheck this for an entire entity. If you do, then when you add the entity to screens, the screen query will have “Support search” unchecked, which removes the search box from the UI.

Keep in mind that the “Is Searchable” property on the entity controls the behavior regardless of what you do in the UI. So if you turn “Support search” on in the screen designer, but it is unchecked in the data designer, then the entity will not be searchable and a message will appear to the user that attempts to perform a search in the UI.

In the case of customer above we don’t need to waste our time searching through properties we’re never going to display to the user like password information. And in the case of the OData service data source, if I decide to only allow searching on the Title’s Name & Synopsis then the query will now be much quicker.

GET http://odata.netflix.com/v2/Catalog/Titles()?$orderby=Name&$filter=substringof('Star%20Wars',Name)%20or%20substringof('Star%20Wars',Synopsis)&$skip=0&$top=45&$expand=Movie,Series,Season,Disc&$select=*,Movie/*,Series/*,Season/*,Disc/*

NOTE: In Visual Studio 11 Beta, the default behavior for OData sources is the same as database data sources. However we are changing this at final release where not all properties will have “Is Searchable” checked by default, so that querying OData sources will be much quicker.

Data Set / Page Size

On the screen designer you can also set the page size to control the size of the result sets that are returned. Here you can fine-tune how many rows of data will come down per page by selecting the screen query and then setting the number of items to display per page in the properties window. By default 45 rows per page are brought down. This helps control the bandwidth you are using when bringing results down from the server to the client.

Auto Executing Queries

By default LightSwitch also auto-executes queries for you. This means you don’t need to do anything to have data load into screens. Sometimes, however, you can make considerable performance gains by controlling this yourself. For instance, if you are creating a custom search screen with many optional parameters you may want to uncheck “Auto Execute Query” to allow users to first specify search criteria and then issue the search at once.

For instance, say we want to create our own search screen for titles and only allow searching on the Name and the Synopsis. We first create a query that makes both of these parameters optional. (For more information see: Creating a Custom Search Screen in Visual Studio LightSwitch)

When we use the query on a screen, uncheck the “Auto execute query” and then add a command button that the user can click to execute the search once they enter all of the optional parameters they want to search. Then we simply write this code to load the results:

Private Sub Search_Execute()
    Me.TitleSearch.Load()
End Sub

Static Spans

Static spans have been around since LightSwitch V1. These are used if you want to make sure to include (or exclude) related entities in the query that loads your data. You typically only need to use this if you are using the related data in your screen code because LightSwitch can see if you are using related data on the screen itself within the content tree and will automatically include this data for you. To control this, first click the “Edit Query” link on the screen query.

Then in the properties window, select “Manage Included Data” to select what data to include.

More Tips & Tricks

These are just some of the query-related things you can do within LightSwitch to help performance. Of course there are a lot of factors outside LightSwitch that can affect performance, like the speed of your data sources and services you are using. For more tips and tricks see:

Enjoy!

.NET Rocks! Podcast: Beth Massi Builds Apps with LightSwitch in Studio 11

Beth Massi — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:51:06 GMT

Check it out, I’ve got another podcast with Richard and Carl this time talking about the new features in LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11. I always have a ton of fun talking with these guys and you can tell I’m super excited about the next version of LightSwitch.

Show #769: Beth Massi Builds Apps with LightSwitch in Studio 11

Carl and Richard talk to Beth Massi about the latest incarnation of LightSwitch. In 2011 LightSwitch shipped as a separate install, but the upcoming version of LightSwitch is part of every SKU of Studio 11. Beth talks about how LightSwitch has evolved to be an awesome consumer and creator of data, making it simple to create oData interfaces over anything. The conversation also digs into the role of Silverlight, the evolution of the client and how LightSwitch makes apps in the cloud much simpler.

Enjoy!

"What’s New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11" Recording Available

Beth Massi — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:57:00 GMT

On Friday last week I delivered a webcast on the new LightSwitch features in Visual Studio 11 beta. I think it went pretty well considering it was the first time I had done the session end-to-end :-). You can now view the webcast recording here:

Download: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11
WMV Download | WMA | MP4

In the session we built an application called “Media Mate” that connects to the Netflix OData source to keep track of favorite movies and music. I showed off new features around all our OData work like how to consume external OData services. I also demonstrated how LightSwitch creates its own OData services adhering to your business rules and security settings so that other clients on different platforms can access your middle-tier easily and securely. I showed off some of the new UI enhancements and business types as well as some of the new deployment enhancements. I attached the presentation slides to the bottom of this post.

One demo hiccup happened where I messed up the search ability over the Netflix data. Doh! What I ended up doing is unchecking the IsSearchable property on the Title entity in the data designer which subsequently disabled the searching on the screen. So it was user error, not a beta bug ;-). At any rate, I think folks got the point. By the way, there are a lot of things you can do to improve search query performance in LightSwitch and I’ll follow up with a post about that soon.

I also demonstrated the updated Contoso Construction sample that you can download here:

Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

For more information on the new features I demonstrated please see:

Also don’t forget to visit the LightSwitch Developer Center, your one-stop-shop for learning all about LightSwitch.

Enjoy!

Modernize Apps Look & Feel with Metro Studio and the Cosmopolitan Shell

Beth Massi — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:04:00 GMT

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 top of the application, streamlined top-bar navigation menu, and a “Metro-style” command bar now located at the bottom of screens. This shell will become part of the product and the default shell and theme for new projects you build with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 at final release.

So I attempted to apply the Cosmo shell to my Contoso Construction application a while back and I got a couple remarks about how my icons were pretty much sticking out like a sore thumb. I used traditional colorful icons in the application and while that looks great with the standard shell, it doesn’t fit well with the Metro-style icons in the Cosmopolitan shell. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to redraw the icons -- and let’s face it, I’m not a designer.

Enter Syncfusion Metro Studio

Luckily there’s a FREE tool out there that you can use to quickly create Metro-style icons! Last night I was reviewing a LightSwitch e-book from Jan (to be released soon I hear!) and he mentioned this free tool so I had to go check it out, Syncfusion Metro Studio. And yes it’s free! Thank you Syncfusion for supporting the community (and particularly the developers who can’t draw!)

This tool comes with a bunch of icon templates you can use to get started designing your own Metro-style icons and it’s super easy to use.

Pick a template and then you can change the sizing, shape, foreground, and background color. You can also view & copy the XAML or save it as a PNG.

For LightSwitch applications that use the Cosmo shell, it’s best to go with a Transparent background so that the light grey of the command bar comes through. Although Metro Studio doesn’t let you choose a transparent background in the color picker, you can simply type it in the textbox (like I show above).

Contoso Construction Updated

It took me about 20 minutes to update all the icons in the Contoso Contruction application and here’s what I came up with. Not bad for not being a designer :-). You can download the updated sample here:

Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

Syncfusion Metro Studio is a huge time-saver and all the icons you create are royalty-free even for commercial applications. Have fun “Metro-styling” your apps!

Enjoy!

I’m Speaking Next Week on What’s New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Beth Massi — Fri, 04 May 2012 20:58:20 GMT

I’ll be speaking next week at the East Bay.NET User Group in Berkeley as well as delivering a MSDN webcast on What’s New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11. I hope you can either make it in person or join in online to see and discuss the exciting new features LightSwitch will bring you. I always have a blast delivering these so I hope you can join!

What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11
Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch is the simplest way to build business applications and data services for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch contains several new features and enhanced capabilities in Visual Studio 11. In this demonstration-heavy webcast, we walk through the major new features, such as creating and consuming OData services, new controls and formatting, new features with the security system and deployment, and much more.

East Bay.NET User Group: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11
Thursday, May 10, 2012 6:45 PM Pacific Time

MSDN Webcast: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11
Friday, May 11, 2012 1:00 PM Pacific Time

Hope to see you there!

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–April 2012

Beth Massi — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:11:00 GMT

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 Studio 11 Beta since it was released back on February 29th. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to give it a spin by downloading Visual Studio 11 Beta. Also make sure to check out these LightSwitch Beta resources and community sites:

Have an idea?: LightSwitch UserVoice site
Need to report a bug?: LightSwitch Connect site
Have a question?: LightSwitch Beta Forum
Need to learn what’s new?: LightSwitch Developer Center

LightSwitch in Visual Studio Beta Resources

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. Check out the LightSwitch Developer Center for a list of key Beta resources for you to explore. Here’s some of our more popular content:

Companion Client Examples

One of the biggest features with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 is the Open Data Protocol (OData) support. Not only can you consume OData services in LightSwitch, the middle-tier services are also now exposed as OData service endpoints reachable by other clients. In April, the community posted many more examples of alternative clients that you can build against your LightSwitch services. I’d like to particularly thank Michael Washington who runs the www.LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com who has been on fire this month posting most of these. Awesome!

Excel PowerPivot:	Creating and Consuming LightSwitch OData Services
Windows 8:	Using LightSwitch OData Services in a Windows 8 Metro Style Application
Windows Phone:	Consume a LightSwitch OData Service from a Windows Phone application
HTML/JavaScript:	A Full CRUD DataJs and KnockoutJs LightSwitch Example Using Only An .Html Page
JQuery Mobile:	A Full CRUD LightSwitch JQuery Mobile Application
Android:	Communicating With LightSwitch Using Android App Inventor
Unity 3D:	Using Visual Studio LightSwitch To Orchestrate A Unity 3D Game

MSDN Magazine Column: Leading LightSwitch

One of our other LightSwitch community rock stars started a new LightSwitch column in MSDN Magazine in March. Jan van der Haegen continues his journey into the depths of LightSwitch with his second article in the April issue:

Leading LightSwitch: The LightSwitch MVVM Model
In this month’s Leading LightSwitch column, Jan explains MV3, a variation of the MVVM application architecture used for LightSwitch apps that is even more powerful than the original application architecture.

New Visual Studio LightSwitch Books Released

Paul Ferrill released his new book in the beginning of April on building SharePoint Apps with LightSwitch. It sounds like this is a short book for the LightSwitch beginner looking to connect to SharePoint data.

Also released was Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Development by Tim Leung and Yann Duran. You may have seen these guys helping answer questions in the LightSwitch forums and they really know their stuff.

More LightSwitch books to check out:

Xpert 360’s Dynamics CRM Online Adapter LightSwitch Extension Released

In April Xpert 360 released a FREE LightSwitch extension that allows you to connect to Dynamics CRM. Looks like they are also working on one for connecting to Salesforce. Check out these resources to get started:

Download: Lightning Adapter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Quick Start: Using the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Adapter in Visual Studio LightSwitch
Tutorial (via LightSwitch Help Website): Xpert 360’s Dynamics CRM Online Adapter LightSwitch Extension

Other Commercial LightSwitch Extensions from our Partners

Many of our Visual Studio partners who build LightSwitch extensions injected into the #LightSwitch twitter feed this month to remind us of these great products, some with new features recently added.

ComponentOne LightSwitch Extensions – FlexGrid, OLAP, Scheduler
DevExpress XtraReports for LightSwitch – Rich client-side reporting
First Floor Software Document Toolkit for LightSwitch – store & view documents
Infragistics NetAdvantage Controls for LightSwitch – mask editors, gauges, charts, data grid, themes, shell
RSSBus Data Providers for LightSwitch – 14 data providers for a variety of data sources

MSDN Webcast: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Join me Friday May 11th 1:00 PM PST for What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11.

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch is the simplest way to build business applications and data services for the desktop and the cloud. LightSwitch contains several new features and enhanced capabilities in Visual Studio 11. In this demonstration-heavy webcast, we walk through the major new features, such as creating and consuming OData services, new controls and formatting, new features with the security system and deployment, and much more.

Notable Content this Month

Extensions (see all 85 of them here!):

In addition to the above, we had a few more extensions from the community released this month.

Samples (see all 80 of them here):

Team Articles:

Lots more articles from the team this month on all the new features in LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11.

We also had a couple top requested How To posts that apply to all versions of LightSwitch:

Community Content:

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Become a fan of Visual Studio LightSwitch on Facebook. Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources. 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)

Enjoy!

Using the Save and Query Pipeline to Flag and Filter Data with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Beth Massi — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 14:12:00 GMT

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. For instance we may have critical or historical data that must always be stored in our databases and never deleted. I used to work in the health care industry and it was important to keep historical patient data. Therefore we would not allow a user to delete a patient’s hospital visit information from the system. Over time, however this causes our data sets to get very large and distracts users from finding the relevant information they need. Hence, we need a way to flag these records and then filter this data out of our result sets across the entire application.

Last year I wrote an article based on LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2010 (LightSwitch V1) showing how you can use the Save & Query pipeline to archive and filter records instead – effectively marking them deleted but not actually deleting them from the system: Using the Save and Query Pipeline to “Archive” Deleted Records. With LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 (LightSwitch V2) the filtering mechanism has been improved using the new entity set filters.

In this post I’ll show you how to use the new entity set filter methods to apply global filtering of records. But first, let’s recap how we can flag these records using the save pipeline.

Tapping into the Save Pipeline

The save pipeline runs in the middle tier anytime an entity is being updated, inserted or deleted. This is where you can write business logic that runs as changes are processed on the middle tier and saved to data storage. Let’s take an example where we don’t want to ever physically delete customers from the system. Here’s our data model for this example. Notice that I’ve created a required field called “IsDeleted” on Customer that is the type Boolean. I’ve unchecked “Display by Default” in the properties window so that the field isn’t visible on any screens.

In order to mark the IsDeleted field programmatically when a user attempts to delete a customer, just select the Customer entity in the data designer and drop down the “Write Code” button and select Customers_Deleting method.

Here are the 2 lines of code we need to write:

Private Sub Customers_Deleting(entity As Customer)
    'First discard the changes, in this case this reverts the deletion
    entity.Details.DiscardChanges()
    'Next, change the IsDeleted flag to "True"
    entity.IsDeleted = True
End Sub

Notice that first we must call DiscardChanges in order to revert the entity back to it’s unchanged state. Then we simply set the IsDeleted field to True which puts the entity into a change state. So the appropriate save pipeline methods (Customers_Updating & Customers_Updated) will now run automatically. You can check the state of an entity by using the entity.Details.EntityState property.

This save pipeline code remains unchanged from LightSwitch V1. However in LightSwitch V2, we need to filter the data differently. Let’s see how.

Using Entity Set Filters

Now that we’re successfully marking deleted customers, the next thing to do is filter them out of our queries so that they don’t display to the user on any of the screens they work with. In LightSwitch V2 a new query interception method, EntitySet_Filter, has been added which allows you to specify a filter that is applied whenever an entity set is referenced. (See the recent article on the LightSwitch Team Blog by Michael Simons: Filtering Data using Entity Set Filters for details on this new feature.)

So instead of using the Customers_All_PreprocessQuery like we had to in LightSwitch V1 as demonstrated here, we can apply the IsDeleted filter in the Customers_Filter method. Using the entity set Filter method is preferred over the All_PreprocessQuery method because the Filter method will execute any time the entity set is referenced, even when the entity has relationships and is not the direct target of a query. This enables true row level filtering across the application.

So for this example, select the Customer entity in the data designer and drop down the “Write Code” button and select Customers_Filter method.

Here we need to write a filter predicate as a lambda expression.

Private Sub Customers_Filter(ByRef filter As Expressions.Expression(Of Func(Of Customer, Boolean)))
    filter = Function(c) c.IsDeleted = False
End Sub

These expressions can seem a little tricky at first but they just take some practice. You can think if these as in-line functions. This one takes a customer parameter and then you return a Boolean expression used to filter the records. You can filter on anything you want, even filter based on security permissions like Michael showed in his blog post. (For more information on lambda expressions see: Lambda Expressions (Visual Basic) and Lambda Expressions (C#).)

Now that we’ve got our Save and Query pipelines set up to handle the “deleted” Customers, we can run the application. When a user deletes a Customer, the behavior is exactly the same as if the Customer was physically deleted from the database.

And if we peek inside the actual Customer table in the database you can see them flagged correctly.

Also, now when we write a query where Customers is not the direct target, the row filtering will still apply. For instance, we have a parent table called Regions. If we wanted to create a query “Regions Over 10 Customers” we would write our query like so:

Private Sub RegionsOver10Customers_PreprocessQuery(ByRef query As IQueryable(Of Region))
    query = From r In query
            Where r.Customers.Count > 10
End Sub

In LightSwitch V1 the additional filter in the Customers_All_PreProcessQuery would not be called when we executed this query. It would include the count of the Customers flagged IsDeleted – which isn’t what we want. You would have to include that filter in this query as well. So if you had a lot of queries in your application that indirectly reference the Customer, then this could get difficult to maintain. In LightSwitch V2 the Customers_Filter method is always called anytime the Customer entity set is referenced, regardless if it is the direct target of a query or not, so this query would always return the expected results.

Because we want to encourage using this approach to achieve true row level filtering, for new LightSwitch V2 projects there is no entry point for EntitySet_All_PreProcessQuery methods anymore. With upgraded projects from V1 they will still run the same as before and you will see them as modeled queries in the Solution Explorer. So there are no breaking changes to your application, but you will want to strongly consider using the entity set Filter methods instead.

Wrap Up

I hope this post has demonstrated how powerful and simple LightSwitch can be when working with data in the save and query pipelines. We’ve beefed up the global filtering technique so that it can handle scenarios like I showed above as well as row level security scenarios Michael demonstrated. If you were using the _All_PreProcessQuery methods, then they will continue to run when you upgrade to Visual Studio 11. However you should be using the entity set Filter methods instead for applying global filters that will run no matter how the entities are accessed.

Enjoy!

Working with SQL Server LocalDB in LightSwitch Projects in Visual Studio 11

Beth Massi — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 23:10:00 GMT

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 creates them in the internal database, also known as the Intrinsic database or ApplicationData. In the first version of LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2010 we used SQL 2008 Express for the internal database development. Now with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 we are using SQL Server LocalDB. (Note: LocalDB is only used during development time. When you deploy your app you can choose to deploy to any version of SQL Server.)

LocalDB is the new version of SQL Server Express that has a much lower memory footprint and is targeted for developers. It is installed automatically when you install Visual Studio 11. When developing LightSwitch projects, LocalDB is used in place of the SQL Server Express user instance feature (which is now deprecated). In this post I’ll show you some tricks on working with LocalDB databases in LightSwitch projects.

SQL Server Object Explorer in Visual Studio 11

In Visual Studio 2010 you used the Server Explorer to access your SQL Express databases. Server Explorer still exists in Visual Studio 11, but there is a new window called the SQL Server Object Explorer that you can use to work with your LocalDB. SQL Server Object Explorer provides a view of your database objects that’s similar to SQL Server Management Studio.

To connect to your LocalDB click the “Add SQL Server” button on the toolbar to bring up the connection dialog. The server name is: (localdb)\v11.0

Once you debug (F5) your LightSwitch project the first time, the internal ApplicationData database will show up under the Databases node. LocalDB will auto attach to the database the first time it is accessed.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you are developing only new tables in a LightSwitch project, you should never need to use this window because you model your data through the LightSwitch Data Designer. In fact, if you modify the schema of the internal database outside of the Data Designer, then the LightSwitch model will get out of sync and you will get errors running the application. I REPEAT, DO NOT MODIFY YOUR INTERNAL DATABASE OUTSIDE THE LIGHTSWITCH DATA DESIGNER.

However, the SQL Server Object Explorer is very handy for working with external databases that you want to bring into your LightSwitch application. During development it is common to work with a local copy of your external databases and SQL Server Object Explorer is a handy way to manage these. One of my favorite features is the schema compare. For more information on the capabilities of the SQL Server Object Explorer please see: What's New for Data Application Development in Visual Studio 11 Beta

Keep in mind that external databases are just that -- they are external to LightSwitch. So you must manage their schema and deployment completely outside of the LightSwitch development environment. For more information on connecting to external data sources see - How to: Connect to Data

Attaching Databases to LocalDB using SQL Server Object Explorer

With a lot of samples out there in all sorts of versions of SQL Server this feature comes in handy: you can attach to a database file (.MDF) and it will automatically upgrade your database to the current version and attach it to your LocalDB instance. This makes it easier to connect to and develop against external databases in LightSwitch. (Note that if you upgrade the database, it will no longer be compatible with earlier versions of SQL Server.)

Let’s take an example.

The AdventureWorks family of sample databases are used in many modern database examples from Microsoft today. They show off features of the latest versions of SQL Server and are maintained on CodePlex. You can download them here. There is a simpler database included here called AdventureWorksLT (AdventureWorks “Light”) that is better for developers learning data since it has a simpler schema.

To attach the AdventureworksLT database:

After you download the AdventureWorksLT2012 Data File, create a folder for your local databases (like C:\Data) and copy the AdventureWorksLT2012_Data.MDF file to that location.
In the SQL Server Object Explorer right click on your LocalDB instance and choose “New Query…” to open a new SQL Query editor.

In the query editor type the following commands:

USE [master] 
GO 
CREATE DATABASE [AdventureWorksLT] ON 
( FILENAME = N'C:\Data\AdventureWorksLT2012_Data.mdf' ) 
FOR ATTACH ; 
GO

Click the execute button on the toolbar (Ctrl+Shift+E) to execute the commands. You will see a message that there was a file activation failure and that a new log file (.LDF) was generated. You may also see some upgrade messages depending on the version of your LocalDB. All normal.
Refresh the Databases node in the SQL Server Object Explorer and you will now see the AdventureWorksLT database attached. You will also see any LightSwitch internal databases that you are working with.

Using the SQL query editor you can also execute other SQL scripts to create and work with your databases. However, you can also use the Server Explorer to attach to a database using a wizard which was also available in Visual Studio 2010. For more information see - How to: Connect to a File-based Database.

Using a LocalDB Database as an External Data Source in LightSwitch

Once you have your databases attached, it’s easy to add them as an external data source.

In the Solution Explorer for your LightSwitch project right-click on the Data Sources node and select “Add Data Source…”
This opens the Attach Data Source wizard where you can select from a variety of external data source types. Select Database and click Next.
In the Connection Properties dialog set the server name to (localdb)\v11.0 and then select the database you want. Note that here you can also attach to a database file as well. This will have the same effect as the attach steps above.
From there you can select the tables and views you want to bring into your LightSwitch application.

Syncing Schema Changes for External Data Sources

The LightSwitch Data Designer will not allow you to change the underlying schema of an external data source. Instead, you can use SQL Server Object Explorer (or any other favorite database tool) to make changes. When you modify the schema of your external data source you need to bring those changes back into LightSwitch (remember do not modify your internal database this way).

To sync the changes, from the Solution Explorer right-click on the external data source and select “Update Datasource”.

Choose all the tables you are using in your LightSwitch application and then click Finish and the changes will be reflected back in the Data Designer.

Wrap Up

SQL Server LocalDB uses less memory than previous versions of SQL Server Express and still provides the automatic attach of databases in order to speed up development of your data-based projects. For external databases, the SQL Server Object Explorer is a welcome addition to Visual Studio and has a similar experience to SQL Server Management Studio. However, remember that you should only make changes to your internal database (ApplicationData) via the LightSwitch Data Designer.

When working with the internal database in LightSwitch, LocalDB is only used during development time. When you deploy your app that uses the internal database, you can choose to deploy to any version of SQL Server, including SQL Azure. Additionally, if you are using external data sources in your LightSwitch application, you are asked for the connection strings of the production databases upon deploy. For more information on deploying LightSwitch applications see Deploying LightSwitch Applications in the MSDN Library and my post LightSwitch IIS Deployment Enhancements in Visual Studio 11.

Enjoy!

LightSwitch Companion Client Examples using OData

Beth Massi — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 18:45:00 GMT

One of the biggest features with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 is the Open Data Protocol (OData) support. OData is a standard Web protocol for exchanging data on the web which provides easy, secure access into data stores. Not only can you consume OData services in LightSwitch, the middle-tier services are also now exposed as OData service endpoints reachable by other clients. For instance, I showed how power users can easily perform analytics and reporting on your LightSwitch data using Excel PowerPivot.

However, this also allows you to create a different UI for your LightSwitch application so that you can expose it to other platforms that aren’t supported out of the box. Furthermore, all your business rules and access control logic is preserved when calling these services. Your data models, business logic, and access control logic is where you spend the bulk of your time when building a LightSwitch application and all this work is preserved.

The team has been focusing on the architecture of these services in LightSwitch as well as how to use them. Particularly:

The community has taken these examples even further. I’d like to call out Michael Washington who runs the www.LightSwitchHelpWebsite.com where he’s been on fire recently posting examples of companion clients. Check these out!

Jan van der Haegen also wrote a great MSDN Article last month using a WIndows Phone 7 client:

Consume a LightSwitch OData Service from a Windows Phone application

Opening up the middle-tier services was a major goal for LightSwitch and you can see why – it allows you to exchange data easily with other systems and clients over the Web. I’m excited to see what the community comes up with next!

Enjoy!

MSDN Webcast: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Beth Massi — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 17:55:16 GMT

Join me next month as I take you on a tour of the new features of LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11.

What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Friday, May 11, 2012 1:00 PM Pacific Time

Hope you can join this webcast, it should be a lot of fun! In the meantime, enjoy some of these LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 resources.

Articles:

Featured Extensions:

Featured Samples:

Community:

You can find all of this plus more on the LightSwitch Developer Center.

That should keep you busy until the webcast next month

Enjoy!

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–March 2012

Beth Massi — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:08:00 GMT

March was filled with a flurry of content around Visual Studio 11 Beta since it was released on February 29th. If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to download it and give it a spin.

Download Visual Studio 11 Beta

You can provide general feedback using the Visual Studio UserVoice site and LightSwitch-specific feedback on the LightSwitch UserVoice site. There are also a handful of Beta forums you can use to ask questions in particular areas, including the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta Forum.

LightSwitch Beta Resources on the Developer Center

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 week! Here’s the easy-to-remember URL:

http://bit.ly/LightSwitchDev11

New Cosmopolitan Shell & Theme

In March the team released the beta version of the LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme extension for Visual Studio 11 Beta.

We drew inspiration from the Silverlight Cosmopolitan theme in designing the extension. The shell and theme provide a modern UI to achieve a more immersive feel, simple and clean styling for the controls, corporate/product branding, as well as many other improvements. This shell will become the default shell for new LightSwitch projects developed with Visual Studio 11. Check out these screen shots and give it a spin! (click to enlarge). You can provide feedback and report issues with the shell in the Beta forum or directly on the LightSwitch Team blog post.

New Extensibility Toolkit & Samples Released

An updated version of the LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit for Visual Studio 11 Beta was also released in March. This toolkit refresh provides project types for creating new LightSwitch Extension Libraries using Visual Studio 11 beta and includes templates for creating all the different types of supported LightSwitch extensions. If you’re building LightSwitch extensions then you’ll want to check out this release.

Along with this release are updated versions of all the extensibility samples.

LightSwitch Community Rock Stars

If you’ve been spending any time developing LightSwitch applications and listening to the #LightSwitch hash tag on twitter, hanging out in the forums, or searching the internet for LightSwitch content, then you probably have run across these people at one time or another. These folks constantly pop up in our community channels – some have been helping the LightSwitch community since the early betas and some are emerging recently. These are just a few of the LightSwitch rock stars to definitely keep an eye on.

Have more folks to recommend? Post a comment below!

New LightSwitch MSDN Magazine Column: Leading LightSwitch

One of our LightSwitch rock stars has started a new column on MSDN Magazine! Jan van der Haegen released his first “Leading LightSwitch” column in the March issue. I’m really looking forward to the great stuff Jan will teach us!

Consume a LightSwitch OData Service from a Windows Phone Application
Jan Van der Haegen's first LightSwitch column explores one of the key features added in the beta release of the tool--the ability to create and consume OData services, which can in turn be consumed from any client, including custom Windows Phone applications.

Notable Content this Month

Lots of content has been streaming out from folks all over the internet. I’m also excited by the number of extensions the community released this month, nice! Here’s some more notable resources I found.

Extensions (see all 81 of them here!):

More Samples (see all of them here):

Team Articles:

Visual Studio 11 Beta (LightSwitch V2)

Visual Studio LightSwitch (LightSwitch V1)

Community Content:

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Enjoy!

LightSwitch IIS Deployment Enhancements in Visual Studio 11

Beth Massi — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 13:48:00 GMT

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 on deployment I mentioned I’d point out some LightSwitch deployment goodies you get in Visual Studio 11 Beta. Last week I was knee deep in IIS6 and 7 deployment and I discovered some nice improvements in Visual Studio 11 that I’d like to discuss. First off, I want to mention that this is a Beta so details may change. However, I think it’s important to point out some of the changes that you see when you deploy your LightSwitch V2 applications to your own web servers. I’m not going to discuss Azure deployment (yet) as we’re still making improvements in this area. This post will focus on IIS deployment only.

Setting up IIS

For the most part, deployment is the same as it was before, albeit with a few nice new features I’ll discuss below. So you can set up your web and SQL servers exactly the same as before. For information on setting up your web servers see:

For IIS7: Deployment Guide: How to Configure a Web Server to Host LightSwitch Applications

For IIS6: Deploying LightSwitch Applications to IIS6 & Automating Deployment Packages

What’s really nice is that you can deploy LightSwitch V2 applications (built with Visual Studio 11 Beta) to any web server you set up using the V1 LightSwitch 2011 Server Runtime prerequisites. Additionally, when we release the final (RTM) version of LightSwitch V2, you will no longer need the LightSwitch server prerequisites or any LightSwitch specific tools. The same Web Platform Installer feed used by the rest of Visual Studio web applications will also work for LightSwitch applications. This reduces the numbers of steps to provision a server and should make deployment a lot more predictable. Read on to see what else we improved…

Import Settings

The first new feature you will notice on the publishing wizard is a button which allows you to import a .PublishSettings file to configure the deployment. Webmatrix and Web Application projects in Visual Studio also have this feature. Some ISPs/hosters will give you this file to make it easy to deploy to their systems. For more information on creating these files yourself see: IIS.NET: Generate a Profile XML File.

Your Choice: Publish Database Schema

Another new feature is the ability to choose whether you want to publish the database schema when you do a direct deployment (on the Publish Output step you select “Remotely publish to server now”). When you configure your database connections you will now see a checkbox that indicates whether LightSwitch should attempt to update the schema too. So if you are updating your application but you didn’t make any schema changes in the data designer, then you can uncheck this box to speed up the deployment. However, be careful – if you are unsure leave this box checked.

Additionally, if you are generating a package on disk (on the Publish Output step you select “Generate a package on disk”) you can also choose whether you want to generate the SQL database script as part of the package.

Generating and Installing Deployment Packages

When you choose to create a deployment package on disk instead of direct deployment, a package .ZIP file is created for you that you can import into IIS. In IIS7 you can import this package using IIS Manager, right-clicking on the Default Web Site and then selecting Deploy –> Import Application as detailed in the deployment guide. This process will prompt you for all the required parameters to install the package and set up the database. However in IIS6 you need to use the command line to import these, as I showed in my last deployment post.

In LightSwitch V2 there are now also a set of files that you can use to automate the importing of the package and specifying parameters via the command line. These are starting points and should be modified as necessary depending on your settings. Administrators can use these to get the right settings together quickly instead of having to manually create these files.

If you open up the readme it will detail the prerequisites and how to use the batch file. It is similar to the settings I detailed in the previous deployment post (which only dealt with V1 applications). Here are the V2 specific settings in the .SetParameters.xml. (Note that there is a Beta bug where you will see three additional internal parameters, “dbFullSql_Path”, “Update web.config connection string”, and “LightSwitchApplication_Path” so you will need to remove these lines if you see them).

Modify the following settings in bold to your specific values:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<parameters>
  <setParameter name="DatabaseAdministratorConnectionString" 
                value="Data Source=servername\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=Application1;
                       User ID=admin;Password=adminPassword" />
  <setParameter name="DatabaseServer" value="servername\SQLEXPRESS" />
  <setParameter name="DatabaseName" value="Application1" />
  <setParameter name="DatabaseUserName" value="dbuser" />
  <setParameter name="DatabaseUserPassword" value="dbpassword" />
  <setParameter name="Application1_IisWebApplication" value="Default Web Site/Application1" />
 </parameters>

Note that the DatabaseAdministratorConnectionString is only used to create/update the database. The DatabaseUserName and DatabaseUserPassword values are used to construct the connection string in the web.config and is the credential used by the LightSwitch middle-tier when your app is running.

If your application is using Windows authentication you will need to specify one additional parameter:

  <setParameter name="Application Administrator User Name" value="DOMAIN\UserName" />

If your application is using Forms authentication you will need to specify three additional parameters:

  <setParameter name="Application Administrator User Name" value="UserName" />
  <setParameter name="Application Administrator Full Name" value="Full Name" />
  <setParameter name="Application Administrator Password" value="strongPassword" />

Once you configure the .SetParameters.xml file, copy the .zip, .cmd and .xml files to the web server where you are the administrator and run the .Deploy.cmd. To install the package and the database run:

>Application1.Deploy.cmd /Y

See the readme for details on more options.

Setting up the System Administrator User

In LightSwitch V1 when you select to use either Forms or Windows authentication, the deployment wizard would ask for the credentials of the System Administrator that should be in the database initially and then after it deployed the database it would call Microsoft.LightSwitch.SecurityAdmin.exe (which is installed with the runtime prerequisites) to insert the corresponding records into the database at that time.

Now the System Administrator credentials you enter in the wizard are stamped in web.config. So now when your application starts the first time, LightSwitch looks to see if that user exists in the database and if it doesn’t, it will be created. This strategy works even when the LightSwitch runtime prerequisites are not installed. So now if you ever need to “reset” the admin password, you can modify web.config – either directly or via re-publish. If you look in the published web.config you will see these new keys:

    <!-- If no admin user exists, create an admin user with this user name -->
    <add key="Microsoft.LightSwitch.Admin.UserName" value="UserName" />
    <!-- When creating an admin user with Forms auth, use this as the full name -->
    <add key="Microsoft.LightSwitch.Admin.FullName" value="Full Name" />
    <!-- When creating an admin user with Forms auth, use this as the pasword -->
    <add key="Microsoft.LightSwitch.Admin.Password" value="strongPassword" />

Once your application runs for the first time and the System Administrator is added, you can remove these settings to avoid storing the password in your web.config indefinitely.

Wrap Up

Most of these are the more advanced IIS deployment settings that should help IT administrators with hosting/deploying LightSwitch applications. And it’s definitely nice that you can host V2 applications without changing your V1 servers. Most users will not need to wade through these settings and will instead deploy directly, hand off a package to an administrator to install, or use the user interface in IIS Manager to import the package manually. However, if you want the power of automated install of packages, and more control over your deployments then these new features should help.

Enjoy!

LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta Resources

Beth Massi — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:10:14 GMT

http://bit.ly/LightSwitchDev11

Goodies include…

New Cosmopolitan Shell & Theme

New Extensibility Toolkit

New Documentation

Beta Forum for Asking Questions

Articles (more each week)

Enhance Your LightSwitch Applications with OData
Creating and Consuming LightSwitch OData Services
Using LightSwitch OData Services in a Windows 8 Metro Style Application
LightSwitch Architecture: OData

Samples & Walkthroughs

Vision Clinic Walkthrough & Sample
Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

So bookmark the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta Resources page and stay tuned for a lot more stuff on the way!

Enjoy!

Deploying LightSwitch Applications to IIS6 & Automating Deployment Packages

Beth Massi — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:34:00 GMT

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. There is a lot more information there on how deployment actually works:

Deployment Guide: How to Configure a Web Server to Host LightSwitch Applications

In this post I’m just going to show you the basic steps necessary to configure a Windows 2003 Server with IIS6 installed. I’ll also show you the MSDeploy commands you need to automate a deployment package created with Visual Studio LightSwitch.

Setup IIS6 on Windows 2003 Server with Web Platform Installer

Step 1: Install Web Platform Installer

You can use the Web Platform Installer (WPI) to set up a Windows web server fast. This makes it super easy to set up a machine with all the stuff you need. Although you can do this all manually, I highly recommend you set up your LightSwitch server this way. This will install IIS & Web Deploy for you (if you don’t have it installed already) and configure them properly.

To get started, select the Products link at the top then select Tools on the left. There you will see two options for LightSwitch Server Runtime. One option is to install SQL Server Express called “Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Server Runtime and Local SQL“ and the other is “without Local SQL”. If you already have an edition of SQL Server installed on the machine or if you are hosting the database on another machine you can choose the “without Local SQL” option

Select the option you want and then click Install and off you go. During the install you will need to reboot a few times.

Step 2: Start Web Deployment Agent

Next we need to verify the Web Deployment Agent Service is started. Open up Services and right-click on Web Deployment Agent Service and select Start if it’s not already started.

Step 3: Configure Your Web Site and Database for Network Access

In order for other computers to access your server’s websites via HTTP on a Windows 2003 machine, you need to configure the Windows Firewall. Click on the Advanced tab, select the network connection and click the Settings… button. On the Services tab check off the “Web Server (HTTP)” and verify the name of your web server, then click OK.

Now computers on your network will be able to navigate to the server via http://SERVERNAME. Next thing you need to verify is that your database server is also accessible. This configuration is the same as I describe in the Deployment Guide using SQL Configuration Manager so refer to that post.

Step 4: Deploy from Visual Studio LightSwitch

Now that your server is set up, you can deploy directly from Visual Studio LightSwitch. Keep in mind that when you deploy directly to IIS6 that the service URL should use http, not https. Https web deployment it is not supported on IIS6. See the Deployment Guide for step-by-step instructions on how to walk through the deployment wizard.

If you are not deploying directly from Visual Studio LightSwitch to your server but instead create a deployment package on disk, see the bottom of this post on how to install the package on IIS6.

Setup IIS6 on Windows 2003 Server without Web Platform Installer

Step 1: Install IIS6

First you will need to install IIS6 on your Windows 2003 box. You can take a look at this article for options on how to do this: Installing IIS (IIS 6.0)

Step 2: Install .NET Framework 4.0

Next you will need to install the .NET Framework 4.0 in order to get ASP.NET on the box.

Step 3: Install Web Deploy 1.1

In order to publish deployment packages you need to install Web Deploy 1.1. Install the appropriate package based on your server architecture and refer to this documentation for installation details: Web Deployment Tool Installation

Step 4: Install Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Server Runtime

Step 5: Start Web Deployment Agent

Open up Services and right-click on Web Deployment Agent Service and select Start if it’s not already started. See Step 2 in above section.

Step 6: Configure Your Web Site and Database for Network Access

In order for other computers to access your server’s websites via HTTP on a Windows 2003 machine, you need to configure the Windows Firewall. See step 3 in the above section on how to do this.

Step 7: Set .XAP file MIME type

In IIS Manager, verify the mime type for the .xap file extension. Right-click on the Default Web Site and select Properties then select the HTTP Headers tab. Click MIME Types… and map the .xap extension to application/x-silverlight-app as shown:

Step 8: Deploy from Visual Studio LightSwitch

If you are not deploying directly from Visual Studio LightSwitch to your server but instead create a deployment package on disk, see below for steps on how to install the package on IIS6.

Importing a LightSwitch Deployment Package into IIS

Note: These instructions will only work for the RTM (version 1) Release of Visual Studio LightSwitch (not LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta). These instructions will work for both IIS6 and 7+

Instead of using direct deployment from the LightSwitch deployment wizard, you can choose to create a deployment package on disk. (See the Deployment Guide for step-by-step on how to walk through the deployment wizard to create a package and deploy it to IIS7).

In order to deploy to IIS6 you need to use the MSDeploy command line tool. If you are going to be creating or updating a remote database you will also need SQL Server Management Objects installed on this machine. You can get these through the Web Platform Installer referenced above and selecting SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 Express or the Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Server Runtime with Local SQL. You can also obtain them directly from here. If you already have SQL or SQL Express installed then you can skip this prerequisite.

1. Make sure you are logged in as an administrator of the machine.

2. Copy the deployment package (i.e. Application1.zip) to the IIS6 server machine.

3. Next create a file with the parameters you are going to need to pass to MSDeploy. You can obtain the parameters you need from the package by executing this command. Open a command prompt and assuming the path to the deployment package is C:\Publish\Application1.zip, type:

>"C:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy\msdeploy.exe" -verb:getParameters -source:package=C:\Publish\Application1.zip

This will list out the parameters you need. Some of them will change based on the type of authentication you are using. For any LightSwitch application you will need to specify the following:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <parameters> <setParameter name="DatabaseAdministratorConnectionString" 
value="Data Source=servername\SQLEXPRESS;Initial Catalog=Application1;
User ID=admin;Password=adminPassword" /> <setParameter name="DatabaseServer" value="servername\SQLEXPRESS" /> <setParameter name="DatabaseName" value="Application1" /> <setParameter name="DatabaseUserName" value="dbuser" /> <setParameter name="DatabaseUserPassword" value="dbpassword" /> <setParameter name="Application1_IisWebApplication" value="Default Web Site/Application1" /> </parameters>

Note that the DatabaseAdministratorConnectionString is only used by this process to create/update the database. The DatabaseUserName and DatabaseUserPassword values are used to construct the connection string in the web.config and is the credential used by the LightSwitch middle-tier when your app is running.

If you are using Windows authentication you will need to specify one additional parameter:

 <setParameter name="Application Administrator User Name" value="DOMAIN\UserName" />

If you are using Forms authentication you will need to specify three additional parameters:

 <setParameter name="Application Administrator User Name" value="UserName" /> <setParameter name="Application Administrator Full Name" value="Full Name" /> <setParameter name="Application Administrator Full Password" value="strongPassword" />

4. Save the parameters XML file in the same location as the deployment package (i.e. Application1.Parameters.xml)

5. Run the following command to import the package, replacing the ServerName below with the name of the IIS server:

>"C:\Program Files\IIS\Microsoft Web Deploy\msdeploy.exe" -verb:sync -source:package=c:\Publish\Application1.zip –dest:auto,computerName=http://ServerName/MSDEPLOYAGENTSERVICE -setParamFile:c:\Publish\Application1.Parameters.xml

If you get any errors connecting to the deployment service then double-check the service is running (as shown above) and verify that you are logged in as an administrator of the machine.

6. If your application is using Forms or Windows authentication then you need to also run the following command to set up the Admin user in the database so you can log in the first time. You need to specify the location of the web.config to do this.

For Windows authentication, run:

>”C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\LightSwitch\1.0\Tools\Microsoft.LightSwitch.SecurityAdmin.exe” /createadmin
/config:"c:\inetpub\wwwroot\Application1\web.config" /user:"DOMAIN\UserName"

For Forms authentication run:

You can perform the same steps on either an IIS6 or IIS7 machine.

Wrap Up

Direct deployment is a lot less work if you can allow it. The LightSwitch publishing wizard performs all the necessary steps for you directly from the LightSwitch development environment. However, often times you do not have (nor want) access to deployment servers. This is why LightSwitch can produce deployment packages on disk instead. With IIS7, you can import these packages using the GUI in IIS manager, however in IIS6 you need to use the MSDeply command line as shown above.

We’re making improvements to the deployment in LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 and in my next post on deployment I’ll walk through some of the enhancements. In particular, now when you create a package, the parameters and command files are automatically generated for you alongside the deployment package. This makes it really easy to just add your settings and go. Until next time…

Enjoy!

UPDATE 2/29/2012: LightSwitch IIS Deployment Enhancements in Visual Studio 11

LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme for VS 11 Beta

Beth Massi — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 19:16:33 GMT

NOTE: This information applies to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 beta.

Last week the team released the LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme for Visual Studio 11 Beta and there has been a ton of great feedback so far. So this morning I decided to update my Contoso Construction sample application to use it.

This shell displays the application logo at the top right, so I made some minor tweaks to the Home Screen to remove the logo image I had there before. I also updated some of the icons on the screen command bars to make them look a little better with this shell, like adding a transparent background.

Check it out! (click pictures to enlarge)

What I really like is the ability to brand the application with your own logo by specifying an image on the general properties of the application. This appears across the top of the main window. If you don’t specify an image then no space is taken up for it.

Another thing I really like is the cleaner menu system which takes up a lot less space than the previous “Office” theme. This theme will become the default theme for LightSwitch applications you create with LightSwitch V2 in Visual Studio 11. You’ll still be able to select the office theme, but this one will be the default on new apps.

I’ve updated the sample here:

Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

Let us know what you think of the new shell by leaving a comment here or on the LightSwitch team blog post. There are a lot of great comments there already.

Enjoy!

Creating and Consuming LightSwitch OData Services

Beth Massi — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:02:00 GMT

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 communicate with data services over the web. Many enterprises today use OData as a means to exchange data between systems, partners, as well as provide an easy access into their data stores. So it makes perfect sense that LightSwitch, which centers around data, also should work with data services via OData. Since OData is a standard protocol, it also means that other clients can access the data you create through LightSwitch.

In my last post on OData in LightSwitch I showed you how we could use external OData services to enhance our LightSwitch applications. In this post I’ll show you how to consume OData services that LightSwitch exposes.

Creating OData Services with LightSwitch

Creating OData services in LightSwitch doesn’t take any additional skills than you had before. In fact, you don’t have to do anything special to create these services. They are automatically created when you define your data and compile your application. Each data source you use in your LightSwitch application becomes a data service endpoint. Within those endpoints, each entity you define in LightSwitch is exposed automatically. Instead of the “black box” middle-tier we had in the first version of LightSwitch, we now have an open middle-tier that can be used to interface with other systems and clients.

What’s really compelling here is not only can you model data services easily with LightSwitch, but any business logic (and user permissions) that you have written on your entities will execute as well, no matter what client is accessing the services. And since OData is an open protocol there are a multitude of client libraries available for creating all sorts of applications on a variety of platforms, from web, phone, etc.

Let’s dig into the service endpoints a little more and see what they look like. For this example I’m going to use the Contso Construction sample.

Getting to Your LightSwitch OData Services

When you deploy your LightSwitch application in a three-tier configuration (either hosting the middle-tier in IIS or Windows Azure) then the service endpoints are exposed. The name of the services correspond to the name of your data sources. In the Contoso Construction sample, we have two service endpoints because we have two data sources. Within each of the services, we can navigate to all the entity sets we model in the data designer.

There are a couple ways you can get to the services when debugging. The easiest thing to do is to change the client application type in the project properties to “Web”. When you debug the app (F5) you will see the port number Visual Studio has assigned you in the address bar of your browser.

While debugging, open another tab in the browser and navigate to your OData service using the port number. You will see the list of entity sets available to query through the service.

The Open Data Protocol is a REST-ful protocol based on AtomPub and defines a set of query operations that can be performed on the data using a set of URI conventions. You query the service with an HTTP-GET request and the service will return to you a feed with the results in the response. To see the raw feed in IE, go to Tools –> Internet Options, Content tab. Under Feeds & Web Slices click “Settings” then uncheck “Turn on feed reading view”.

If we want to see all the customers in the system we can simply type the URL http://localhost:41155/ApplicationData.svc/Customers and you will get the following response from the service. Each entry in the feed is a customer entity which corresponds to a row in the database.

Keep in mind that the queries are case sensitive. Notice it’s Customers not customers in the URL. If you want to return a customer who’s ID = 1 then use:

http://localhost:41155/ApplicationData.svc/Customers(1)

which would return only the first customer shown above. Similarly, the OData protocol defines a standard way of navigating relationships via navigation properties. If you want to get all the construction projects for a particular customer use:

http://localhost:41155/ApplicationData.svc/Customers(1)/Projects

which would return just that customer’s projects. If you want to return only Customers who’s last name is “Massi” then use:

http://localhost:41155/ApplicationData.svc/Customers?$filter=LastName eq 'Massi'

Of course there are a whole slew of other query operations supported like OrderBy, Top, Skip, Sort, etc. Take a look at the Open Data Protocol URI conventions for a full list. There are also operations defined in the protocol for performing updates, inserts and deletes using standard HTTP verbs. The LightSwitch client communicates with the middle-tier data services this way.

Another way to inspect the service requests and responses is to install a tool like Fiddler. Fiddler is a Web Debugging Proxy which logs all http(s) traffic between your computer and the Internet or localhost. This way you don’t have to change the client application type, you can leave it as a desktop application and still see the traffic. If you’re trying to build your own clients against OData services this is a must-have tool.

Now that you understand how OData services are exposed from the LightSwitch middle-tier, let’s move on and consume some of our data from another client outside the LightSwitch client. One of my favorite tools for analyzing data is Excel.

Consuming LightSwitch Services in Excel using PowerPivot

You don’t actually need to know anything about OData to consume these services in Excel. Excel has a free add-in aimed at power users called PowerPivot that you can install into Excel 2010 to get access to all sorts of data sources that Excel doesn’t support out of the box, including OData feeds. Download it at www.powerpivot.com. You can arm your power users with this add-in and point them to your LightSwitch data services to perform complex data analysis and create reports all in a familiar tool.

To connect Excel to an OData service, click on the PowerPivot tab and then click the “PowerPivot Window” button to launch PowerPivot. Click the “From Data Feeds” button and supply the Data Feed URL, then click next.

At this point you can select from a list of data sets.

Select the data you want and then click finish. PowerPivot will import the data you select into a set of spreadsheets. You can keep importing additional feeds or data sources into PowerPivot and then relate them together to create powerful data mashups. To create relationships between your data sets select the Design tab on the PowerPivot window and click Manage Relationships.

Once you set up the relationships you need, you can create pivot tables and charts by selecting the Home tab and dropping down the PivotTable button.

You will then see the PowerPivot Field List window that you can use to create charts like normal. Keep in mind that if you are not working against LightSwitch data services that are deployed but are instead trying this while debugging, you may need to update the port number to your data service. You can do this in the PowerPivot window by selecting the Design tab and then clicking “Existing Connections”. Then you can update the port number and refresh the data back on the Home tab.

The updated Contoso Construction sample contains a spreadsheet in the root folder called ContsoAnalysisPowerPivot.xlsx that has a variety of charts you can play with.

Contoso Construction - LightSwitch Advanced Sample (Visual Studio 11 Beta)

Wrap Up

I hope you are now starting to realize how powerful LightSwitch can be not only to create business applications, but also data services. Being able to consume as well as expose LightSwitch data sources as OData services opens the door for a wide variety of client applications accessing your data through your business rules. In the next few weeks the team and I will take you on some more adventures with OData and show you some of the numerous possibilities you now have. Of course, we’ll also drill into other new features as well. Stay tuned!

Enjoy!

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–February 2012

Beth Massi — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 14:45:00 GMT

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 Studio 11 Beta which includes LightSwitch in the box! Very exciting to be on the Dev11 train.

Download Visual Studio 11 Beta

You can read about the major new features of LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 beta on the team blog:

Announcing LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta

We’ll be releasing more content weekly on all the new features so keep tuned into the LightSwitch team blog and the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta page on the Developer Center. And please visit the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta forum to ask the team questions.

Of course a lot of other things happened in February…

LightSwitch Star Contest – Grand Prize Winners & Mini Case Studies

The LightSwitch Star Contest has come to a close over on Code Project and all the prizes have been announced. However, even though the contest is over, CodeProject has created a dedicated LightSwitch section of their site to host the submissions as well as any new tutorials that people want to contribute. Check out all the submissions, particularly ones that have been deployed to Azure, to give you an idea of the types of applications you can create quickly with LightSwitch.

In early February they announced the grand prize winners. Here are all the winners of the contest. Congrats to all!

Most Efficient Business Application

1st prize November: App name: Security Central – winner name: Keith Craigo
2nd prize November: App name: PTA LightSwitch – winner name: Matt Milner
1st prize December: App name: Patient Tracker – winner name: Netsuper
2nd prize December: App name: Instant Assets – winner name: Delordson Kallon
1st prize January: app name: LightSwitch Job Hunter Application - winner name: stuxstu
2nd prize January: app name: Orion – winner name: TheRegan
Grand Prize: app name: Security Central - winner name: Keith Craigo

Most Ground-breaking Business Application

1st prize November: app name: Church+ - winner name: Ihesie Peter Onyebuchi
2nd prize November: app name: Engineering App – winner name: Laurentz Tonniau
1st prize December: app name: Health and Safety Management System - winner name: PaulSPatterson
2nd prize December: app name: Orion – winner name: Julio Iglesias Vázquez
1st prize January: app name: MyBizz Portal - winner name: Jan Van der Haegen
2nd prize January: app name: Light Enterprise Solution – winner name: Chun Te
Grand Prize: app name: MyBizz Portal - winner name: Jan Van der Haegen

LightSwitch at TechDays Netherlands

A couple weeks ago I had the pleasure of returning to one of my favorite countries, The Netherlands, to speak at TechDays. I delivered two LightSwitch talks, one intro and one advanced. Read my trip report on the fun adventures and check out the videos of my sessions:

LightSwitch at MVP Summit

Last week over 1500 Most Valuable Professionals visited Microsoft for a week of meetings with the product teams. It’s always great to see folks helping drive our developer communities face-to-face. I saw a lot of friends and the team got a lot of great feedback on LightSwitch (as well as Azure, Office & SharePoint development). While I was there, Jay Schmelzer and myself chatted with MVPs Andrew Brust and Michael Washington about LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta. Jay and Andrew talked about what developers can look forward to in the next release of LightSwitch and me and Michael chat about the community (of course!). Check out these short videos:

Beta Time at the MVP Global Summit

LightSwitch Unleashed – Book Released!

One of the things me and Michael spoke about in the interview is Alessandro Del Sole’s book released last week. Congrats Ale!! I know it was a long road but you did it! I was the technical reviewer for the book and I know how much work it was to get it right.

Book: Visual Studio LightSwitch Unleashed

Michael Washington also interviewed Alessandro on his website: An Interview With Alessandro Del Sole.

And Alessandro also made chapter 3 available to download for free! Thanks!

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Become a fan of Visual Studio LightSwitch on Facebook. 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)

Enjoy!

Enhance Your LightSwitch Applications with OData

Beth Massi — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:50:00 GMT

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 (OData) services support. LightSwitch can now consume as well as produce OData services from it’s middle-tier. This means that applications you create with LightSwitch will automatically expose data as open services which allows a multitude of clients easy (secure) access into your data. It also means that you will be able to consume data services from within LightSwitch in order to enhance the capabilities of your applications. In this post I’m going to show you how you can take advantage of using OData in your LightSwitch applications. In the next post I’ll show you how you can work with the OData services LightSwitch creates. But first, a little background on OData.

What is the Open Data Protocol (OData)?

OData is an open REST-ful protocol for exposing and consuming data on the web. It attempts to break down the silos of data that are common across the web by standardizing on the way that data is accessed. Instead of learning new APIs to access data specific to each application’s web service, OData provides a common way to query and update data via REST. You can learn a lot more about OData at www.odata.org.

OData has been around for a couple years and there are more and more providers of data services popping up all the time all over the web. Within Microsoft, many of our products expose and consume data services via the Open Data Protocol. For instance, SharePoint exposes all of its list data as OData services. Similarly, reports you create with Reporting Services can be exposed via OData. PowerPivot is an add-in to Excel 2010 that allows you to consume data services and perform complex data analysis on them. So it makes perfect sense that LightSwitch, which centers around data, also should work with data services via OData. Many enterprises today use OData as a means to exchange data between systems, partners, as well as provide an easy access into their data stores.

To dive deeper into data services and the OData protocol you can read articles on OData.org, or here on my blog. A really good article I recommend is by Chris Sells - Open Data Protocol by Example.

In this post I’m going to show you how to consume OData in your LightSwitch applications. For this example we’ll use some data from the Azure DataMarket. In my next post I’ll show you how to consume OData services that LightSwitch exposes in other clients, like Excel.

The Azure DataMarket

The Azure DataMarket is a place where producers can host their data sets and people can subscribe to them to enhance their client applications. There are all kinds of datasets you can subscribe to, some are free some are pay. There is weather, traffic, NASA, UN, and all sorts of other kinds of data available that you can use. (Beta Note: Not all of the datasets are compatible with LightSwitch currently but we are working to make more of them compatible for the final release.)

First you need to sign up for an account by navigating to http://datamarket.azure.com/. Once you sign up, you will be given a customer ID and an Account Key. Now you can browse the plethora of data sets available to you in a multitude of categories. Let’s subscribe to a free dataset from Data.gov. In the Search box at the top right of the page search for “Crime” and in the results you will see the Data.gov dataset.

Select the Data.Gov dataset and then click the Sign Up button on the right to activate the subscription. Then click the “Explore this Dataset” link to browse the data.

Click the “Run Query” button and the first 100 rows of the data will be returned to you.

Notice at the top of the page you will see the Service root URL. This is the location of the service that we will use in our LightSwitch application. In this case it’s https://api.datamarket.azure.com/data.gov/Crimes/

Enhancing Contoso Construction with Crime Data

I’m going to take a variation of a sample I built a while ago that is an example of an application that could be used in the construction business. One of the features of this application is that it displays a map screen of the construction project location. From the Project screen users can click the Show Map button to open the map screen which uses a Bing Map control extension (included with the sample) to display the location.

What we’d like to do is also display the crime data to the user so that they can see whether working in that city is generally safe or not. This is information we can get for free from the dataset we just subscribed to from the Azure DataMarket.

Connect LightSwitch to an OData Service

You add an OData service to your LightSwitch application just like you would any other external data source. Right-click on the Data Sources node in the Solution Explorer and then select “Add Data Source” to open the Attach Data Source Wizard. You will now see OData Service as an available choice.

Click Next and enter the service root URL from above. Then for login information choose Other Credentials and enter your DataMarket Customer ID for the username and your Account Key for the password. You can get this information by logging into the DataMarket and navigating to “My Account” https://datamarket.azure.com/account/info.

Click the Test Connection button and select the CityCrime dataset and click Test to make sure everything is working properly.

Click Next and LightSwitch will display all the available entities for you to choose from. Select CityCrime and then name the Data Source “CrimeData” and click Finish.

Next you will see the CrimeData added to the list of data sources in the Solution Explorer and LightSwitch will open the Data Designer where you can model the entities further. You can add business rules, set additional properties as well as add calculated fields. Just like any other external data source, you cannot change the underlying structure of the data, but you can select business types, declarative and custom validations, and configure a variety of other smart defaults.

What we want to do is display to the user the probability of being a victim to a violent crime in a specified city. So we need to calculate the ratio of violent crime using a computed property. Click the “Computed Property” button at the top of the Data Designer, call it ViolentCrimeRatio and make it a String. On the Properties window click “Edit Method” and provide the following result.

Private Sub ViolentCrimeRatio_Compute(ByRef result As String) ' Set result to the desired field value If Me.ViolentCrime > 0 Then result = String.Format("1 in {0}", Me.Population \ Me.ViolentCrime) End If End Sub

We’re also going to want to set a Summary property for the entity so it displays nicely on screens. Add another computed String property called Summary and write the following code:

Private Sub Summary_Compute(ByRef result As String)  ' Set result to the desired field value result = Me.City & ", " & Me.State & ": " & Me.Year End Sub

Then select the CityCrime entity and at the bottom of the properties window set the Summary Property to the Summary field. At this point we can test out the data set by adding a quick Search Screen and selecting CrimeData.CityCrimes for the screen data.

Hit F5 to build and run the app and open the Search City Crimes screen. Notice that LightSwitch is loading the data asynchronously and paging it for us automatically.

Writing Queries Against an OData Service

Now that we’ve got our connection to the OData service, we want to write a query that pulls the data for a specific City and State. Writing a query against the OData services is the same experience as any other data source in LightSwitch.

To add a new LightSwitch query, right-click on the CityCrimes entity in the Solution Explorer and select “Add Query” to open the Query Designer. Name the query CrimesByCityState. Then add two filter conditions; 1- Where the State is equal to a New Parameter called State, and 2- Where the City is equal to a New Parameter called City. We’ll also sort the results by Year descending.

To test this query really quickly, add another Search Screen and this time select the CrimesByCityState query. When you run this screen, LightSwitch will ask you for the State and City parameters. Because they are both required, once you enter both of them LightSwitch will automatically execute the query. You can choose to make parameters optional in the query designer properties window.

Enhancing the Map Screen with Crime Data

Instead of a separate screen we want to display this information on the Map Screen. Open the MapScreen and click “Add Data Item” at the top of the Screen Designer and select the CrimesByCityState query.

Next add two local properties one for City and one for State by clicking Add Data Item again, this time selecting Local Property of type String.

Now you need to bind these local properties to the query parameters. In the screen designer, select the query parameter State and in the properties window set the Parameter Binding to “State”. Repeat for City by selecting the City query parameter and setting the Parameter Binding to “City”.

You know you have it right when there is a grey arrow from the query parameter to the local property. Finally, select both the local properties and in the property window check “Is Parameter” for both of them. This will allow us to pass in the city and state from the Project screen.

Next, drag the CrimesByCityState from the left onto the content tree where you want it. I’ll add it to the top of the screen and I’m just going to display the two computed properties, Summary and ViolentCrimeRatio. Also, since we’re now filtering the data only a few rows will be returned so I can turn off paging & sorting to save some room on the screen. Select the CrimesByCityState query and in the properties window uncheck “Supports paging” and “Supports searching”. Also since this data is read-only, I’ll remove all the commands from the data grid row command bar.

So after adjusting the visual properties of the screen how we want, the final thing we need to do is pass the city and state into the map screen along with the address. From the ProjectDetail screen select the Show Map button, right-click and select “Edit execute code”, and adjust the code as follows:

Private Sub ShowMap_Execute() 'Show a map of the customer address as well as crime data Me.Application.ShowMapScreen(Me.Project.Customer.FullAddress, Me.Project.Customer.City, Me.Project.Customer.State) End Sub

Now when we run the application, open the Project Detail screen, and click the Show Map button, it will display the crime data from the OData service on the Azure DataMarket.

Wrap Up

I hope this post has demonstrated how you can use data from OData services inside your LightSwitch applications. Keep in mind that not all services provide all operations against the data (for instance the Crime Data is read only) so that using random OData feeds may not be compatible with LightSwitch if they do not support querying, sorting or filtering. We’re working on guidance that will detail more about what operations are necessary to have a good LightSwitch experience and we will be working with partners to prepare them as we move from Beta to the final release.

I have updated the Contoso Construction application for LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta so have a look. There are a lot of new features that I took advantage of in there, not just the crime data OData service.

In the next post you will see how LightSwitch creates OData services from the data sources you define and how you can write external clients to get to that data, including business rules and user access control. In Visual Studio 11 beta, LightSwitch is the simplest way to create business applications and data services for the desktop and the cloud.

Enjoy!

UPDATE 3/9/2012: Read my next post on OData - Creating and Consuming LightSwitch OData Services

Visual Studio 11 Beta Released!

Beth Massi — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 15:43:17 GMT

We are extremely happy to announce the release of Microsoft® Visual Studio® 11 Beta! This release also includes the next version of LightSwitch!

Download Visual Studio 11 Beta

Please see the LightSwitch Team Blog and the LightSwitch Beta Resources page on the Developer Center for information on new features available in LightSwitch. We’ll be rolling out more in-depth content and training in the coming weeks so keep checking back. My personal favorite is the new OData support so you know I’ll be writing a lot about that in the next few days. ;-)

Read Jason Zander's blog for information on new capabilities in Visual Studio 11 and .NET Framework 4.5. Beta comes with a “Go Live” license which means you can now start using Visual Studio LightSwitch for production projects!

We also created a new forum for Beta. Please post questions and feedback in the LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta Forum.

Enjoy!

Trip Report–Techdays 2012 Netherlands

Beth Massi — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:21:16 GMT

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking again at Techdays Netherlands on Visual Studio LightSwitch. It’s my third time speaking there and the venue is top-notch at the World Forum in The Hague.

Check out all the session recordings for Techdays 2012 on Channel 9.

Introducing Visual Studio LightSwitch

My first session was in a big room that had about 100 people, almost all of them professional developers (they get paid to write code everyday). In this session we build my version of the Vision Clinic application from scratch, end-to-end, including security and deployment. We do write some code but only some simple business rules and calculated fields, and in the end we have a full-blown business application. The goal is to show what LightSwitch can do for you out of the box without having to know any details of the underlying .NET technologies upon which it is built. The recording is available on Channel 9. I suggest downloading the High Quality WMV:

Video Presentation: Introduction to Visual Studio LightSwitch

When I asked who had downloaded LightSwitch already, about 75% raised their hand. I also asked how many people were not professional developers (didn’t get paid to write code) and a few people raised their hand. This is pretty much what I expected since this was a pro developer conference. What I showed in the session is pretty close to what I included in the LightSwitch Training Kit. If you look under the “LightSwitch Overview” on the right-hand sidebar on the opening page of the training kit, you will see the complete demo code and demo script that you can use for training folks at your local user groups. :-)

I also brought some LightSwitch Reviewer’s Guides that marketing created to help convince business decision makers of the value of using LightSwitch. I ran out of them within seconds. I was able to snag the PDF version that you can download here:

Visual Studio LightSwitch Reviewer’s Guide

Here are some more resources to check out that will help introduce you to Visual Studio LightSwitch:

LightSwitch Advanced Development and Customization Techniques

In this session I showed some more advanced development and different levels of customization that you can do to your LightSwitch applications. There were about 75 people in the session. I was happy to see so many people ready to dive deeper. I started off by showing the Contoso Construction sample application that has some more advanced features like:

“Home screen” with static images and text and completely custom screen layouts
Personalization with My Appointments displayed on log in
“Show Map..” links under the addresses in data grids
Picture editors
Reporting via COM interop to Word
Import data from Excel
Composite LINQ queries to retrieve/aggregate data
Custom report filter builder
Sending email in response to events on the save pipeline

Download the Contoso Construction Sample

Video Presentation: Advanced Development & Customization Techniques

This session demonstrated the many levels of LightSwitch customization from simple code customizations and custom classes all the way to building full blown extensions. I showed how to access the code behind queries so you can write more advanced LINQ statements. I showed some advanced layout techniques for screens. I also showed how to flip to File View and access client and server projects in order to add your own classes. We injected some business rules into the save pipeline in order to email new, updated and canceled appointments. I also showed off the LightSwitch entity API to create an audit trail, and I demonstrated the free Office Integration Pack extension from Grid Logic to create reports with Word and import data from Excel.

I went through the 6 LightSwitch extensibility points. Shells, themes, screen templates, business types, custom controls and custom data sources. I showed how to install and enable them and then we built a theme. I showed off the LightSwitch Extensibility Toolkit which helps LightSwitch extension developers build these types of extensions. LightSwitch extensions are similar to other Visual Studio extensions, they are also VSIX packages you just click on to install and manage via the Tools –> Extension Manager. Here are some more resources for building LightSwitch extensions:

Also check out all the available LightSwitch extensions on Visual Studio Gallery. In particular I recommend these free ones:

As well as ones available from our partners, like:

LightSwitch Masterclass

I came in a day early to speak at a local user group outside of Amsterdam at Sogeti. It started off a little loud because we were sitting near the kitchen in the cafeteria but once they cleaned up, it quieted down. I didn’t mind too much because I’m good at yelling ;-).

There was about 50 people in the Masterclass and I demoed LightSwitch for about two and a half hours. I basically did the two presentations above back-to-back. I got a lot of good feedback and people seemed to really enjoy the class. Afterwards, a lot of us hung out and drank real Heineken and pondered the meaning of software development. Thanks to Michiel van Otegem for organizing this and thanks to all of those who attended.

Fun Stuff

Anytime you attend a conference you get to have fun, especially ones in the Netherlands ;-). One particular highlight was that I got to meet Jan Van der Haegen in person. Jan is a “LightSwitch hacker” so-to-speak and avid blogger. He is one of the most passionate people I know about software design and LightSwitch development. He drove 3 hours from Belgium to The Hague to see me and we chatted for hours. He gave me a lot of great feedback about how to improve the LightSwitch development experience and extensibility model.

We decided to tag along with Gill Clereen and Bart De Smet for dinner where we talked about life, code and everything in between. Jan and I shared a bottle of wine which was an awesome Petite Syrah from a local (to me) Livermore winery -- Concannon Vineyards. It was so cool to see it on the menu that I had to order it. However we didn’t finish it and in Europe they do not have the concept of take out (a.k.a. doggie bag). So they struggled to find a bag for us and ended up giving us one from what I’m told is a five and dime store. LOL. Here’s a (really bad) picture of Bart holding the bag, Jan in the middle and Gill on the right.

Until next time, Netherlands!

LightSwitch Screen Tips: Scrollbars and Splitters

Beth Massi — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:08:00 GMT

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, however, sometimes we rather allow the user to resize sections of the screen how they see fit. It’s common in screen design to use splitter controls to do this. Splitters are a useful UI feature where the width or height of a control on the screen can be modified to show more or less information. In this post I’ll show you how you can enable splitter controls to appear in LightSwitch as well as control how scrollbars behave.

Create Your Screen

First create a screen with all the information you want to display. For this example I will use the ContactDetails screens we created in the Address Book Sample. In this example, Contacts have many Addresses, PhoneNumbers and EmailAddresses. By default, LightSwitch will place the Contact fields at the top of the screen with a Tab Control of three DataGrids representing the children.

Here is what the screen looks like:

And here is the content tree for the screen:

Scrollbars in LightSwitch

Imagine that over time our contacts get more and more email addresses, phone numbers, and/or addresses. If the user’s screen resolution is low (or the size of the application shell is not maximized) then LightSwitch will place a vertical scrollbar on the screen by default (I added the green box for clarity ;-))

This is controlled by selecting the topmost Rows Layout and under the Appearance properties you will see “Vertical Scroll Enabled” checked. Notice there is also a “Horizontal Scroll Enabled” property you can use to enable horizontal scrollbars when needed. All group controls in LightSwitch have these properties (i.e. Rows Layout, Columns Layout, Table Layout)

Leaving this checked however, means that the user cannot see all the email addresses and the First & Last name fields at the same time. There are a couple things we can do here. One is we can disable vertical scroll of the screen. Once we do that LightSwitch will automatically place the scrollbar into the grid itself instead.

But what if we aren’t using a DataGrid (or list control) below the list of fields? Or what if we want the user to choose how many rows they need to view at a time? In those cases, we can allow the user to resize the panels of information using a splitter.

Adding a Horizontal Splitter

In order to provide this functionality, we can place a splitter between the list of fields at the top and the tab control below. While the application is running in debug mode, click the “Design Screen” at the top-right of the shell to open Customization Mode. Select the nested Rows Layout control for Contact and under the sizing properties you will see a check box “Is Row Resizable”.

Check that and then click Save to save your changes. You will now see a splitter control that you can use to resize the top and bottom panels.

In this case you probably also want to set a minimum and maximum height of this Rows Layout panel so that the user doesn’t use the splitter to wipe the grid completely off the screen. Right now if you take and drag the splitter off the screen, the grid will completely disappear. In order to stop this, you can set the MinHeight and MaxHeight properties. You can enable a scroll bar to appear in the top panel when needed by checking “Vertical Scroll Enabled” as well.

Adding Vertical Splitters

You can also add vertical splitters in a similar way. Instead of displaying DataGrids in separate tabs, say we want to display them side-by-side. Open customization mode again and change the Tabs Layout to a Columns Layout.

Then select each DataGrid and in the Sizing properties, check “Is Column Resizable”.

Now you can resize all of the columns containing the DataGrids. The DataGrids will automatically put a horizontal scrollbar at the bottom so users can see all the fields as necessary.

Another Example

Splitters and scrollbars really start helping you out when you have sections of information and/or commands that you want to allow the user to resize. Here I modified the Contoso Construction example to allow resizing of the tab control of commands on the left and the information on the right.

Wrap Up

There are a lot of things you can do with the LightSwitch Screen designer in order to provide completely customized layouts. Controlling scrollbars and adding splitters is just another way you can achieve what you want. For more tips and tricks on customizing screens see:

Enjoy!

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–January 2012

Beth Massi — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:30:00 GMT

Looks like folks took a few well-deserved days to ramp back into the groove after the holidays (including myself). But there were still a lot of awesome things around LightSwitch this month, especially the number of submissions The Code Project had in the LightSwitch Star Contest. A lot of really interesting applications and some great case studies for LightSwitch as well as some for Azure. Check them out…

“LightSwitch Star” Contest

In November The Code Project launched the “LightSwitch Star” contest. 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. Prizes are given away each month. Soon they will announce the January winners as well as the two grand prize winners of an ASUS U31SD-DH31 Laptop!

Check out all the submission we had in January and make sure to log onto Code Project and vote for your favorites. Here’s a breakdown of the 13 apps that were submitted in January (see all 34 apps that have been submitted here). There are some very creative “business apps” here – like a campaign manager for Dungeons & Dragons!

Profiling-Pro (video) – Project profiler that helps make sure your software projects are done on time
Luminous Commands For LightSwitch - Luminous Commands provides two pieces of functionality that was missing from LS RTM but wanted by many users
Access Control Manager - The Access Control Manager tracks user access to applications and other products (such as hardware, cellphones, etc.) by creating requests for access by the supervisor of the user
Light Enterprise Solution - An article about applications that is an enterprise system targeted for Small & Medium Enterprises in Malaysia and Singapore
LightSwitch Job Hunter Application - Job application tracker for those out of work built using Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011.
Job Hunter LightSwitch Application (video) - This is a demo video of a free application that is intended to help job applicants. The application and source code are free to download
Illuminous overview (video) - Illuminous is a comprehensive college management tool developed using Visual Studio LightSwitch.
Data Centre: A Product Information and Promotion Management System - A system for easily and effectively storing product information and managing promotions.
Visual Studio LightSwitch Application Database Script Generator - A tool to generate Sql server DB script from the LightSwitch internal database
MyBizz Portal - The "smallest" LightSwitch application you have ever seen. A portal to other LightSwitch applications.
Client Management System - A complete CRM solution that manages the entire customer lifecycle.
BPO Productivity Tool - This is is primarily built as a custom LightSwitch Shell Extension in which I embed PRISM to manage all LightSwitch and non-LightSwitch views.
Birthright Campaign Manager - Birthright Campaign Manager is an open source role playing computer aid for Birthright, a campaign setting for Dungeons & Dragons.

There are a lot of really interesting real-world LightSwitch production applications that were submitted. Some departmental apps, a few personal apps, some enterprise apps as well as a couple start-up companies. There are also some great case studies here for Azure, in particular:

Developer Center Updates

Learn Page Updates

In December I kicked off a series aimed at beginner developers just getting started with LightSwitch and was featured in the MSDN Flash Newsletter. In January we updated the Learn page of the Developer Center to feature this series and it’s been getting some great traffic!

I also released the completed source code for the sample we build in the series: Beginning LightSwitch - Address Book Sample

How Do I Videos – Learning Made Easier

We also updated all the How Do I video pages to show the sequential list of videos so that you can easily get to the previous and next videos in the series. This makes it a lot easier to navigate through the over 20 videos in the correct order. Just click into any video page like this one and you will see the video navigator at the bottom of the page.

Notable Content this Month

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

Extensions released in January (see all 73 of them here!):

The team also released a control extension sample that you can learn from. Check out the announcement on the team blog: Many-to-Many Control Released!

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

Team Articles:

Community Articles:

Presentations:

Samples (see all of them here):

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

The Visual Studio LightSwitch Facebook Page has been increasing in activity thanks to you all. 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 (although this is a common English word so you may end up with a few weird ones ;-)). Join the conversation! And if I missed anything please add a comment to the bottom of this post and let us know!

Enjoy!

Calling Web Services to Validate Data in Visual Studio LightSwitch

Beth Massi — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:15:00 GMT

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 of an email address (which LightSwitch handles automatically for you) but you also want to verify that the email address is real. Another common example is physical Address validation in order to make sure that a postal address is real before you send packages to it.

In this post I’m going to show you how you can call web services when validating LightSwitch data. I’m going to use the Address Book sample and implement an Address validator that calls a service to verify the data.

Where Do We Call the Service?

In Visual Studio LightSwitch there are a few places where you can place code to validate entities. There are Property_Validate methods and there are Entity_Validate methods. Property_Validate methods run first on the client and then on the server and are good for checking the format of data entered, doing any comparisons to other properties, or manipulating the data based on conditions stored in the entity itself or its related entities. Usually you want to put your validation code here so that users get immediate feedback of any errors before the data is submitted to the server. These methods are contained on the entity classes themselves. (For more detailed information on the LightSwitch Validation Framework see: Overview of Data Validation in LightSwitch Applications)

The Entity_Validate methods only run on the server and are contained in the ApplicationDataService class. This is the perfect place to call an external validation service because it avoids having clients calling external services directly -- instead the LightSwitch middle-tier makes the call. This gives you finer control over your network traffic. Client applications may only be allowed to connect to your intranet internally but you can allow external traffic to the server managing the external connection in one place.

Calling Web Services

There are a lot of services out there for validating all sorts of data and each service has a different set of requirements. Typically I prefer REST-ful services so that you can make a simple http request (GET) and get some data back. However, you can also add service references like ASMX and WCF services as well. It’s all going to depend on the service you use so you’ll need to refer to their specific documentation.

To add a service reference to a LightSwitch application, first flip to File View in the Solution Explorer, right-click on the Server project and then select Add Service Reference…

Enter the service URL and the service proxy classes will be generated for you. You can then call these from server code you write on the ApplicationDataService just like you would in any other application that has a service reference. In the case of calling REST-ful services that return XML feeds, you can simply construct the URL to call and examine the results. Let’s see how to do that.

Address Book Example

In this sample we have an Address table where we want to validate the physical address when the data is saved. There are a few address validator services out there to choose from that I could find, but for this example I chose to sign up for a free trial of an address validation service from ServiceObjects. They’ve got some nice, simple APIs and support REST web requests. Once you sign up they give you a License Key that you need to pass into the service.

A sample request looks like this:

http://trial.serviceobjects.com/av/AddressValidate.asmx/ValidateAddress?Address=One+Microsoft+Way&Address2=&City=Redmond&State=WA&PostalCode=98052&LicenseKey=12345

Which gives you back the result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Address xmlns="http://www.serviceobjects.com/"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Address>1 Microsoft Way</Address>
    <City>Redmond</City>
    <State>WA</State>
    <Zip>98052-8300</Zip>
    <Address2/>
    <BarcodeDigits>980528300997</BarcodeDigits>
    <CarrierRoute>C012</CarrierRoute>
    <CongressCode>08</CongressCode>
    <CountyCode>033</CountyCode>
    <CountyName>King</CountyName>
    <Fragment/>
  </Address>

If you enter a bogus address or forget to specify the City+State or PostalCode then you will get an error result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Address xmlns="http://www.serviceobjects.com/"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
  <Error>
    <Desc>Please input either zip code or both city and state.</Desc>
    <Number>2</Number>
    <Location/>
  </Error>
</Address>

So in order to interact with this service we’ll first need to add some assembly references to the Server project. Right-click on the Server project (like shown above) and select “Add Reference” and import System.Web and System.Xml.Linq.

Next, flip back to Logical View and open the Address entity in the Data Designer. Drop down the Write Code button to access the Addresses_Validate method. (You could also just open the Server\UserCode\ApplicationDataService code file if you are in File View).

First we need to import some namespaces as well as the default XML namespace that is returned in the response. (For more information on XML in Visual Basic please see: Overview of LINQ to XML in Visual Basic and articles here on my blog.) Then we can construct the URL based on the entity’s Address properties and query the result XML for either errors or the corrected address. If we find an error, we tell LightSwitch to display the validation result to the user on the screen.

Imports System.Xml.Linq
Imports System.Web.HttpUtility
Imports <xmlns="http://www.serviceobjects.com/">

Namespace LightSwitchApplication
  Public Class ApplicationDataService

    Private Sub Addresses_Validate(entity As Address, results As EntitySetValidationResultsBuilder)
      Dim isValid = False
      Dim errorDesc = ""

      'Construct the URL to call the web service
      Dim url = String.Format("http://trial.serviceobjects.com/av/AddressValidate.asmx/ValidateAddress?" &
                              "Address={0}&Address2={1}&City={2}&State={3}&PostalCode={4}&LicenseKey={5}",
                              UrlEncode(entity.Address1),
                              UrlEncode(entity.Address2),
                              UrlEncode(entity.City),
                              UrlEncode(entity.State),
                              UrlEncode(entity.ZIP),
                              "12345")

      Try
          'Call the service and load the XML result 
          Dim addressData = XElement.Load(url)

          'Check for errors first
          Dim err = addressData...<Error>
          If err.Any Then
              errorDesc = err.<Desc>.Value
          Else
              'Fill in corrected address values returned from service
              entity.Address1 = addressData.<Address>.Value
              entity.Address2 = addressData.<Address2>.Value
              entity.City = addressData.<City>.Value
              entity.State = addressData.<State>.Value
              entity.ZIP = addressData.<Zip>.Value
              isValid = True
          End If

      Catch ex As Exception
          Trace.TraceError(ex)
      End Try

      If Not (isValid) Then
          results.AddEntityError("This is not a valid US address. " & errorDesc)
      End If
    End Sub
  End Class
End Namespace

Run it!

Now that I’ve got this code implemented let’s enter some addresses on our contact screen. Here I’ve entered three addresses, the first two are legal and the last one is not. Also notice that I’ve only specified partial addresses.

If I try to save this screen, an error will be returned from the service on the last row. LightSwitch won’t let us save until the address is fixed.

If I delete the bogus address and save again, you will see that the other addresses were verified and all the fields are updated with complete address information.

Wrap Up

I hope this gives you a good idea on how to implement web service calls into the LightSwitch validation pipeline. Even though each service you use will have different requirements on how to call them and what they return, the LightSwitch validation pipeline gives you the necessary hooks to implement complex entity validation easily.

Enjoy!

Beginning LightSwitch–Address Book Sample

Beth Massi — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:48:13 GMT

Some folks have been asking for this so I just released the completed Address Book sample that you build step-by-step in the Beginning LightSwitch Article Series.

Download the Address Book Sample

Read the Series

Are you completely new to LightSwitch and software development? Read this entry-level article series to get started with the most important concepts you need to build any LightSwitch application.

More Information

Visit the LightSwitch Developer Center to download LightSwitch and get started learning.

Download Visual Studio LightSwitch

Watch the instructional LightSwitch "How Do I?" videos

Get essential training

Ask questions in the LightSwitch forums

Enjoy!

Using Different Edit Screens Based on Record Types (Table Inheritance)

Beth Massi — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:59:00 GMT

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 for a pet store to manage their inventory of animals. We need to collect shared properties of all the animals in an Animal table but we also want to set up table inheritance to Fish, Cat and Dog tables which collect specific properties of those types of animals. When a user selects an animal on a search screen, we need to display a screen that lets them work with the correct data from the specific table. LightSwitch provides a “Show as Link” on labels which automatically opens up the default details screen for that entity, but in our case we could have multiple screens. There are also a few techniques you need to know when dealing with these types of relationships in LightSwitch, particularly around the insert pipeline. In this post I will show you how you can achieve this functionality.

Create The Data Model

First let’s start by creating a simple inheritance data model for the pet store. We will build an Animal table that collects general properties of any animal in the store. Then we will build Cat, Dog and Fish tables to collect specific properties of those types of animals. The relationship between the Animal table and the others will be a ‘one to zero or one’ relationship.

For this example, the Animal table has two required properties, Name and Type. Type is a Choice List with the static values “Cat”, “Dog”, “Fish” to correspond to the type of record the animal is. We will use this to drive what records are inserted into which specific table as well as use it to determine which screens to display.

Next, create the Cat, Dog and Fish tables to collect properties specific to these types of animals.

Finally, set up the relationships from Animal to these tables as a “one to zero or one” relationship with a delete behavior of “Cascade Delete”.

Our data model now looks like this.

Create the Screens

Next we’ll need to enter new animals into the system. Create a New Data Screen and select Animal as the screen data. When you do this, LightSwitch will include all the one-to-one related tables as fields on the screen. However, we only want to require the user to enter the general Animal properties on this screen. Once they save, we will direct them to the correct Cat, Dog or Fish detail screen. So first delete all the items in the content tree of the Screen Designer except for Name and Type.

Next, create an Edit Details Screen and select the Animal screen data again. Name the screen CatDetail and uncheck “Use as Default Details Screen”.

Again you will see that LightSwitch reads these special relationships and adds all the fields from all four tables to the screen. We will need to make some changes. First, change the “Type” from an Auto Complete box to a Label. Once the user has entered the type of animal on the New Data screen, it cannot be changed. Next, delete all the fields related to Dog and Fish from the screen.

Repeat the same process to create the DogDetail and FishDetail screens, removing the fields from the screen that do not belong.

Finally, add a Search Data Screen and select the Animal as the screen data again. Select the “Name” content item and in the properties window uncheck “Show as Link”.

Instead of using the built-in “Show as Link” functionality, we need to create our own command. We can put commands anywhere on the screen and we can show them as buttons or links. (For more information see: “I Command You!” - LightSwitch Screen Commands Tips & Tricks) For instance we could put an edit button on the screen command bar, the grid command bar, or even in the row itself. Let’s add a command into the row itself.

Right-click on the Data Grid Row Command Bar in the content tree and select “Add Button…”. Create a new method called “Edit”.

We want to show the command as a link instead of a button so select the button in the content tree and change it to a link.

Write the Code

Now we need to write some code to pull this all together. Right-click on the button we just created and select “Edit Execute Code” to open the code editor. Here we will check what type of animal we have to open the corresponding screen.

Private Sub Edit_Execute()
    If Me.Animals.SelectedItem IsNot Nothing Then
        Select Case Me.Animals.SelectedItem.Type
            Case "Cat"
                Me.Application.ShowCatDetail(Me.Animals.SelectedItem.Id)
            Case "Dog"
                Me.Application.ShowDogDetail(Me.Animals.SelectedItem.Id)
            Case "Fish"
                Me.Application.ShowFishDetail(Me.Animals.SelectedItem.Id)
        End Select
    End If
End Sub

Next we need to write similar code on the New Data screen so that it opens the correct detail screen after the user saves a new animal record. Open the CreateNewAnimal screen and in the upper right drop down the “Write Code” button and select the CreateNewAnimal_Saved method. First comment out the call to ShowDefaultScreen and then write code to determine which screen we need to show instead:

Private Sub CreateNewAnimal_Saved()
    Me.Close(False)
    'Application.Current.ShowDefaultScreen(Me.AnimalProperty)

    Select Case Me.AnimalProperty.Type
        Case "Cat"
            Me.Application.ShowCatDetail(Me.AnimalProperty.Id)
        Case "Dog"
            Me.Application.ShowDogDetail(Me.AnimalProperty.Id)
        Case "Fish"
            Me.Application.ShowFishDetail(Me.AnimalProperty.Id)
    End Select
End Sub

Finally, we need to implement a business rule on Animal in the save pipeline. This rule is important so that a new record is added to the correct table based on the animal’s type. That way after the user saves the CreateNewAnimal screen, a record will be written to the correct table and the detail screen will open and allow the user to edit the specific fields in the Cat, Dog or Fish table. Double-click on Animals in the Solution Explorer under the Data Sources/ApplicationData node to open the Data Designer. Drop down the Write Code button and select the Animals_Inserting method and write this code:

Private Sub Animals_Inserting(entity As Animal)
    Select Case entity.Type
        Case "Cat"
            If entity.Cat Is Nothing Then
                entity.Cat = New Cat()
            End If
        Case "Dog"
            If entity.Dog Is Nothing Then
                entity.Dog = New Dog()
            End If
        Case "Fish"
            If entity.Fish Is Nothing Then
                entity.Fish = New Fish()
            End If
    End Select
End Sub

Run it!

Enter new animals on the Create New Animal screen and when you click Save, the correct detail screen will open allowing you to enter more specific details based on the type of animal.

On our search screen, we can click the Edit link on any of the rows and it will open to the correct details screen as well.

Wrap Up

I hope this post answered the reader’s question on how to open different detail screens depending on the record’s type. All it takes is implementing your own command. I also touched on one to one relationships and how to set up basic table inheritance. I encourage you to experiment more with this type of relationship. They come in particularly handy when you need to extend external data sources with additional properties or when you need to set up inheritance hierarchies. The trick is to get a record inserted into the right table when you insert the master / parent record. I’ll expand on a couple other techniques in a future post.

Enjoy!

Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness

LightSwitch Tips & Tricks on Query Performance

Default Searching Behavior

Data Set / Page Size

Auto Executing Queries

Static Spans

More Tips & Tricks

.NET Rocks! Podcast: Beth Massi Builds Apps with LightSwitch in Studio 11

"What’s New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11" Recording Available

Modernize Apps Look & Feel with Metro Studio and the Cosmopolitan Shell

Enter Syncfusion Metro Studio

Contoso Construction Updated

I’m Speaking Next Week on What’s New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–April 2012

LightSwitch in Visual Studio Beta Resources

Companion Client Examples

MSDN Magazine Column: Leading LightSwitch

New Visual Studio LightSwitch Books Released

Xpert 360’s Dynamics CRM Online Adapter LightSwitch Extension Released

Other Commercial LightSwitch Extensions from our Partners

MSDN Webcast: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Notable Content this Month

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Using the Save and Query Pipeline to Flag and Filter Data with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

Tapping into the Save Pipeline

Using Entity Set Filters

Wrap Up

Working with SQL Server LocalDB in LightSwitch Projects in Visual Studio 11

SQL Server Object Explorer in Visual Studio 11

Attaching Databases to LocalDB using SQL Server Object Explorer

Using a LocalDB Database as an External Data Source in LightSwitch

Syncing Schema Changes for External Data Sources

Wrap Up

LightSwitch Companion Client Examples using OData

MSDN Webcast: What's New with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–March 2012

LightSwitch Beta Resources on the Developer Center

New Cosmopolitan Shell & Theme

New Extensibility Toolkit & Samples Released

LightSwitch Community Rock Stars

New LightSwitch MSDN Magazine Column: Leading LightSwitch

Notable Content this Month

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

LightSwitch IIS Deployment Enhancements in Visual Studio 11

Setting up IIS

Import Settings

Your Choice: Publish Database Schema

Generating and Installing Deployment Packages

Setting up the System Administrator User

Wrap Up

LightSwitch in Visual Studio 11 Beta Resources

Articles (more each week)

Samples & Walkthroughs

Deploying LightSwitch Applications to IIS6 & Automating Deployment Packages

Setup IIS6 on Windows 2003 Server with Web Platform Installer

Setup IIS6 on Windows 2003 Server without Web Platform Installer

Importing a LightSwitch Deployment Package into IIS

Wrap Up

LightSwitch Cosmopolitan Shell and Theme for VS 11 Beta

Creating and Consuming LightSwitch OData Services

Creating OData Services with LightSwitch

Getting to Your LightSwitch OData Services

Consuming LightSwitch Services in Excel using PowerPivot

Wrap Up

LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–February 2012

LightSwitch Star Contest – Grand Prize Winners & Mini Case Studies

LightSwitch at TechDays Netherlands

LightSwitch at MVP Summit

LightSwitch Unleashed – Book Released!

Book: Visual Studio LightSwitch Unleashed

More Notable Content this Month

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Enhance Your LightSwitch Applications with OData

What is the Open Data Protocol (OData)?

The Azure DataMarket

Enhancing Contoso Construction with Crime Data

Connect LightSwitch to an OData Service

Writing Queries Against an OData Service

Enhancing the Map Screen with Crime Data

Wrap Up