Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch

Microsoft’s Visual Studio comes with an exciting new Edition named as LightSwitch. This is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is customized to built line-of-business applications built only on .Net platforms and using .NET Technologies. The applications which are produced in this IDE are 3-tier. The User interface is run at Microsoft SilverLight, it’s logic and data-access tier is hosted at ASP.NET and the primary data storage supports Microsoft SQL Server Express, Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft SQL Azure. Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch creates professional-quality business applications for the desktop, the web, and the cloud.  LightSwitch also supports other data sources including Microsoft SharePoint.

LightSwitch, allows the developers to build PROFESSIONAL-QUALITY BUSINESS APPLICATIONS in an easy and fast manner. The developers can build custom applications that rival off-the-shelf solutions. IT gives the developers an opportunity to work at pre-configured screen templates that gives the application a familiar look and feel. LightSwitch also provides prewritten codes. This is a big help for the developers. It also provides them with other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, along with helpful step-by-step guidance. However, if the developer needs to write code by him/herself, Visual Basic .NET or C# can be used. It can be deployed to the desktop, browser, or cloud (post-Beta) to share the application with others more easily without the burdensome installation processes.

Using LightSwitch, data can be accessed easily. LightSwitch supports exporting data to MS Office Excel. This makes reporting and sharing fast and easy. The application can be attached to existing data sources, which makes it easy to collect, analyze, and reuse information from a variety of data sources. These data sources include Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SQL Azure, SharePoint, Microsoft Office Access, and other third-party data sources.

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch helps the developers to create custom applications for the way business is done in any organization. The technology used in business and business options can be kept open, while building a practical yet scalable application that matches the current needs of the business and also the needs of the future. The pre-built templates and components in LightSwitch are fully extensible i.e. they can be extended and enhanced to meet the needs of the business. In this way, the organization can get the specific functionality that the application demands.  Plus, the applications built in LightSwitch can grow to meet the increasing demands of popular applications using the Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud Hosting option.

Light Switch is a relatively new member of the Visual Studio Family. But the amount of functionality it provides the developers makes it user friendly and it looks like a very promising Edition of Visual Studio.

The “Express” Edition of MS Visual Studio is designed especially for students or people  who have interest in application development. It is basically an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) which has little complication and light weightiness. It has made Visual Studio easy-to-use for the less professional people, yet, at the same time, it provides the users with equal efficiency for developing the desired projects. The best thing about The Express Edition is that it is available to everyone without cost!

So, how has it been made “light-weight?”  The Express edition either installs tools for platforms i.e. web, phone, Windows etc, or it installs tools for supported development languages i.e. C#, VB, ASP etc. The Express Edition provides its users with a number of products to work on.

• Visual Basic Express

• Visual Web Developer Express
• Visual C++ Express
• Visual C# Express
• SQL Server Express
• Express for Windows Phone

Visual Basic Express

Visual Basic Express includes visual Windows Presentation Foundation(WPF) designer with a code name “Cider”. WPF is a graphical subsystem which provides user interfaces in Windows based applications. This product also include a better IntelliSense support. IntelliSense provides documentation and disambiguation for variable names, functions and methods while the programmer is typing using reflection. It corrects common spelling mistakes, invalid syntax and also provides suggestion for the class names if the names are mistyped. It also debugs the codes at runtime. However, this product of MS Visual Studio Express edition cannot be used to develop Web Applications using ASP.NET. It doesn’t support development for mobile devices and cannot generate Crystal Reports.

Visual Web Developer Express

It is a cost-free development tool provided to develop web based applications. The main function of this product is to create websites with ASP.NET.  It has a WYSIWYG(What You See Is What You Get) interface. Plus, it consists of drag-and-drop user interface designer. Another feature is that it consists of enhanced HTML & code editors with a (limited) support of  database explorer. It also supports for other web technologies like CSS, JavaScript, XML.

Visual C++ Express

This product has the capability of compiling .NET applications along with Win32 applications. However it does not have a resource editor or a built-in MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class Library) support. To make applications using MFC, you’ve got to download the Libraries from alternative sources like Windows Driver Kit. This product also doesn’t support x64 applications. And neither it supports add-ins or macros.

Visual C# Express

Like the previous products, Visual C# Express is also free, light weight and a very user friendly  IDE. It facilitates those developers who want to develop consol-based applications, Class Libraries or Windows Form desktop applications. Developers, Students, hobbyists can also use it to develop games when it is combined with XNA Game Studio. Due to its capability to develop games, Visual C# Express is gaining high popularity amongst enthusiastic game programmers.

SQL Server Express

This product is a redistributable edition of the original MS SQL Server. Like other Express Edition products, SQL Server Express is very light weight and available free of cost. It provides an integrated data storage solution for developers who develop Windows applications and create Web sites that require data storage. However “Date Mirroring” or “Data Clustering” is not supported by this product. Furthermore, there is no User Interface to import/export data to and from the tables of the database. This product can support databases having up to 4GB maximum size.

Express for Windows Phone

Windows phone is used to develop applications that will run on your cell phones. This product helps the users develop these applications from designing to testing. The applications can be made using Microsoft Silverlight or XNA Game Studio programming. The  Windows Phone Developer Tools provide the users all the facilities to get started building Windows Phone apps.

Microsoft Visual Studio – An Introduction.

Designing applications is not a new area in the digital world, but Microsoft has given application development a new look by introducing “Microsoft Visual Studio”.  It has revolutionized the way applications are designed, application interfaces are made and even how websites are created!

So what exactly is “Microsoft Visual Studio”?  It is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) having a code editor and a debugger.  The programmers write down a code in the code editor. After writing the code, it is compiled to check for errors. The debugger notifies the programmer of the errors in the code. Another component of this IDE is a designer. The designer displays the graphical appearance of the application while it’s being created.

Visual Studio provides you an environment in which you can add various components in your application or website. These components include buttons, text fields, boxes, pointers and many more application building components. These components are available in a “Tool box”. The programmer just has to drag and drop the components to the designer.  The functionality of the components is added by coding at the code editor mentioned above.

The best thing about Visual studio is that it is not dependent on one programming language only.  It provides coding in various languages. So if you know how to program in Visual Basic you can program with same efficiency as a programmer writes codes in C#. It also supports F# and ASP.net. Apart from these languages, Microsoft Visual Studio also provides separate language services in which must be installed to work on Python, Ruby and some more languages.

While developing websites, Visual Studio supports server side programming as well as client side programming. The languages used to do server side coding are C# and ASP.net. When programming at client side the languages used are HTML, XHTML with its style sheet CSS , XML with its style sheet XSLT, JavaScript.

Interface for Database applications can also be developed in Visual Studio. It supports Database queries written in SQL Server. It provides a way to connect the database at the SQL Server with the application being developed. It also supports connectivity for other databases maintained in MS Access, DB2, and Oracle.

Microsoft Visual Studio has many versions. The first version was introduced in 1997. After that various enhancements were made in different features of Visual Studio and more versions were introduced in 1998, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2008. The latest version is Visual Studio 2010. The “Express” Edition of MS Visual Studio 2010 has many components namely Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C# and Visual Web Developer. This edition provides these components at no cost.

Microsoft Visual Studio is available in various (human) languages. These include English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Russian, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional).The availability of MS Visual Studio in many human understandable languages has increased ease of use. It has made application development an easy job for the professionals, that’s why its popularity is increasing day by day.