LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup– August 2012

Last year 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.

Visual Studio 2012 Released!

The big news in August was we finally released Visual Studio 2012 to the public on August 15! LightSwitch includes a variety of improvements in Visual Studio 2012, such as such as a new theme, the ability to access data from any OData source as well as create OData services, Active Directory integration, new business types, and a whole lot more. We are also working on support for HTML clients, which will be available as an add-on to VS2012. For more details on all the major new features in Visual Studio see Jason’s blog: Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5 released to the web!

DOWNLOAD: Visual Studio 2012

Now that LightSwitch is a core part of the Visual Studio 2012 product line, Visual Studio now provides a comprehensive solution for developers of all skill levels to build line-of-business applications and data services quickly and easily for the desktop and cloud. For more information on Visual Studio 2012, head to http://microsoft.com/vstudio

LightSwitch Developer Center is now part of the Visual Studio Developer Center

With this product integration, we have also aligned the LightSwitch and Visual Studio web sites including a new integrated Developer Center and User Voice sites. Your URLs remain the same and will redirect to the new locations. The Developer Center is still your one-stop-shop for learning all about Visual Studio and building business applications with LightSwitch.

LightSwitch on the Visual Studio Developer Center: http://msdn.com/lightswitch

New “How Do I” Videos on LightSwitch Development in Visual Studio 2012

There are a ton of goodies that we’ve been releasing on the Developer Center, including a new series of “How Do I” videos on how to use the new LightSwitch features in Visual Studio 2012. Last week we released three new videos that you can check out on the “How Do I” video page.

• How Do I: Get Started with the LightSwitch Starter Kits?
• How Do I: Consume OData Services in a LightSwitch App?
• How Do I: Create OData Services with LightSwitch?

Updated LightSwitch Starter Kits for Visual Studio 2012

Starter Kits are project templates that help get you started building specific LightSwitch applications. You can download them right from the within Visual Studio and once installed they show up in your “New Project” dialog. Using the Starter Kits can help you learn about LightSwitch as well as get you started off right with a basic data model, queries and screens that you can customize further. (See this video on how to install them.) There are six Starter Kits available in both Visual Basic and C#.

See all LightSwitch Starter Kits here.

Beginning LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012 Article Series

Back in December I created a sample and series of articles that took a beginner through developing a simple business application. The articles are aimed at the beginner programmer but should also be interesting to anyone just getting started with LightSwitch. In August I updated this series for Visual Studio 2012:

Are you completely new to LightSwitch and software development? Get started building an Address Book application with this Beginning LightSwitch Series.

• Part 1: What’s in a Table? Describing Your Data
• Part 2: Feel the Love. Defining Data Relationships
• Part 3: Screen Templates, Which One Do I Choose?
• Part 4: Too much information! Sorting and Filtering Data with Queries
• Part 5: May I? Controlling Access with User Permissions
• Part 6: Go beyond the box. Customizing LightSwitch Apps with Extensions
• Download the Competed Sample App

Building the LightSwitch Course Manager Sample

Andy also updated his super popular LightSwitch Team blog series on building the Course Manager sample using Visual Studio 2012. This is a great intermediate set of articles that walk through many aspects of building a professional quality business application using LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012.

LightSwitch Course Manager End-to-End Application (Visual Studio 2012)

• Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 1 – Introduction
• Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 2 – Setting up Data
• Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 3 – User Permissions & Admin Screens
• Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 4 – Implementing the Workflow
• Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 5 – Detail Screens
• Course Manager VS 2012 Sample Part 6 – Home Screen

More Notable Content this Month

Extensions (see over 100 of them here!):

• With the release of Visual Studio 2012, ComponentOne has updated and re-released their Studio for LightSwitch.

Samples (see all 89 of them here): 

• LightSwitch Course Manager End-to-End Application (Visual Studio 2012)
• Beginning LightSwitch in VS 2012 - Address Book Sample
• LightSwitch HTML Preview Sample App - Doctors Office

Team Articles:

• Beginning LightSwitch Series (6-part series & sample)
• Getting Started with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012
• Library: Reporting and printing in LightSwitch
• LightSwitch Course Manager End-to-End Application (6-part article series & sample)
• Publishing LightSwitch Apps to Azure with Visual Studio 2012–UPDATED
• Trip Report: St. Louis Day of .NET
• Visual Studio 2012 Released to Web!

Community Articles:

• A Visual Studio LightSwitch Picture File Manager
• A practical approach for intra-table auditing
• August 2012 Southern California LightSwitch User Group Meeting (With Beth Massi)
• Backup a LightSwitch project
• Calling in LightSwitch the SaveChanges method in an async way with an ExecuteCompleted event
• ComponentOne LightSwitch Studio
• Retrieve a record explicitly asynchronous with an ExecuteCompleted event
• Saving Occurrences of Recurring Appointments in Scheduler for LightSwitch

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, #VS2012 #LightSwitch)

Enjoy!