A few weeks back Microsoft announced a new baby in the Visual Studio family of tools - the tremendously powerful and easy-to-use product for building applications targeting desktop and cloud and browser based apps.
Some good write-ups are available on this website too, describing the tool and tutorials for creating applications with LightSwitch.
So, who are some good user targets for this tool?
- Business Users to create functional applications- they know the business, now they can be equiped to build applications.
- Sales/Marketing to provide Proof-of-concept - no more need to "draw" screenshots. You can have a quick working version to 'walk-the-talk' with your next potential client and get a quick 'buy-in'
- Design teams for wire-frames - avoid the forest/trees syndrome and have reality based wireframes for your designs.
- Development teams as a prototype tool - next time you manager asks you 'can you do a quick app to ...' you can whip up LightSwitch and literally turn on the light switch!
- Development teams for rapid custom application development - quick to build but get a solid scalable re-usable design base.
- Development/Analysis teams for functional specifications - Analysis teams can take the functional requirements one step further.
- Development teams to build integration applications (combine data from various systems, including SharePoint) - a real life application
As with any thing else, strong and easy-to-use tools are like a knife - a potential killer in the wrong hands or a life-saver in the right hands!
What do you think, friends?
Cheers!