Visual Studio LightSwitch: Part 1

Building Modern, HTML5 Based Business Apps on Windows Azure with Visual Studio LightSwitch.

Basics Of  LightSwitch

LightSwitch | Introduction

  • LightSwitch is nothing but a development environment in Visual Studio for building data-based business oriented applications and data services quickly and more comfortably.
  • It is easy to get handled because what you need to write is only the code for the business logic.
  • LightSwitch provides a roadmap for the application as its needs and user base logic.

LightSwitch | Features

  • It provides a flexible deployment model
  • You can publish it on Windows Azure or Office-365
  • Supportive environment

LightSwitch | Functionalities

It provides generally these 3 major functionalities:

Light Switch Functionalities

  1. Mobile Web Business Applications

    • Optimized for touch
    • Runs on platforms like iOS, Android, WP8, WinRT
    • Default screen templates
    • Multiple form factors
    • No code experience with default temps
     
    Mobile Web Business

  2. Desktop Business Applications
     
    • Optimized environment
    • Suitable for heavy data entry
    • Mouse & Keyboard scenarios
    • Legacy app integration
    • Default screen temps
    • No-code experience with default temps

      Desktop Business Applications
  3. Hosting
     
    • Office-365 / SharePoint 2013
    • Infrastructure for app access
    • Organizational identity
    • Lifecycle Management
    • Provider hosting (Azure/ IIS)
    • Flexible operational infrastructure options
    • Leverage experiences

      Hosting

Visual Studio 2012 | LightSwitch Key Features

HTML Client

  • Responsive design supports, framework design, architectural based design supports multiple from factors produces single page application, it is also known as SPAs.
  • Streamlined screen creation and navigation
  • Responsive command bars
  • Popup and screens as dialogs for user interaction
  • Semantic types

SharePoint 2013 Applications

  • Connect to SharePoint 2013 lists as entities
  • Access SharePoint assets through CSOM
  • Auto hosted deployment
  • SharePoint office-365

LightSwitch | Performance

The main performance issues of LightSwitch are:

Light Switch Performance

App Load

  • Minification
  • Static compression

OData

  • Reduce payload size
  • Managing JSON files

LightSwitch | Extended Features

  • Localize app on multiple languages
  • Globalization
  • LINQ Queries
  • Data Workspaces
  • Server application context

Next Article: Visual Studio LightSwitch: Part 2

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