Late last month Microsoft release a beta version of LightSwitch, the latest member of the Visual Studio 2010 family.
LightSwitch, The Developer Story
With LightSwitch you can build custom applications and get the UI scaffolded for you by using pre-configured screen templates that give your application a familiar look and feel. LightSwitch also provides prewritten code and other reusable components to handle routine application tasks, you know, the day to day stuff that can be so tedious for developers. Of course, it’s not all “plug and play” programming, if you need to write custom code, you can use Visual Basic .NET or C#. Applications written in LightSwitch can deploy to the desktop or browser. In the final version of LightSwitch, you’ll be able to deploy your applications to the cloud too.
LightSwitch And Data
with Lightswitch you can attach your application to existing data sources, including MS Sql Server, Azure SQL, Sharepoint and other third-party data sources. Also, after release, LightSwitch will support Access. Creating data is done via a grid view:
And you can connect to existing data by using the standard data wizard:
Reporting, LightSwitch’s Missing Functionality
As of the moment, and probably at release time too, there is no built in reporting functionality for LightSwitch, instead, data can be exported to Excel for analysis or to Word for reporting.
LightSwitch and XAF Battle Tyranny!
Although, at first glance, it may appear that LightSwitch competes with our own XAF product, on closer examination you will see that they are really allies in the same battle. What battle is that you ask? It’s the battle that all corporate developers must fight at least once in their lives, the battle against the business’ love of pushing multi-user, departmental scale applications into desktop tools such as Access and Excel. Before we look at how LightSwitch helps XAF in this battle, let us pause for a moment and examine how it is that we find ourselves fighting this same battle over and over.
That’s Another Fine (Corporate) Mess You’ve Gotten Me Into!
There are many things that can cause a department to start to rely on desktop tools to perform tasks like this for which they were never designed, some are deliberate, and others are accidental. An example of an accidental reliance can be seen in what I call the “Honey I blew up the app!” effect. This is where one guy thinks it would be really useful to have a database of Doodahs, so he creates one for himself and hosts it on his desktop. This is what Access, for example, is designed for and so he’s a happy bunny at this stage. Soon other people in the office get to hear about the Doodah database and they think its a great idea and they say, “hey how about sharing that buddy?”, and being a good pal he does, he puts the Access file on some central share somewhere so his friends can use it too. Time passes and word of the Great Doodah Database spreads far throughout the company and before you know where you are, you have a mission critical piece of functionality contained within, what is essentially, a desktop application.
An example of a deliberate reliance on these tools is what I call the “Three Wise Monkeys” effect. This happens when management in a company – for example a bus company – decide that IT is not their core activity or skill set and they no longer wish to have the expertise in house. They outsource their IT to a specialist company who, rightly, put in place processes for having software written, deployed and maintained. This is all very sensible, however, at the “coal face” it means that before, when a line manager wanted a simple application written, he’d walk down the hall and speak to “Joe” about it, now he has to fill in 3 copies of 4 forms and send them to 5 different people and then wait 6 months for his software. The result is that he can’t get anything done. Never fear though because there is a “get out of jail free” card. Although the company has outsourced all the application development and their systems are now managed for them, the outsourcing company decreed that Microsoft Office, and other applications of a desktop nature, were deemed to be “Products of Personal Effectiveness” and so are not covered by the agreement. This means that the outsourcing company wont give you support because you don’t know how to remove the bold emphasise on your latest and greatest report, for instance. Of course, it also means that our hero can once again walk down the hall and speak to “Joe”, only this time he gets him to build an Access database.
LightSwitch And XAF Ride to the Rescue!
However it happens we, as developers, know that this is a common story with a predictably bad ending: “Hey Joe, you know that Access database that we use to control our country’s nuclear deterrent, you did remember to back it up before you replaced your desktop machine, right?!”. It’s clear that developers need tools which are as easy to use as Access, Excel and their like, but actually allow them to develop robust and scalable applications. XAF and LightSwitch compliment each other in this exact space. Where LightSwitch offers the developer an easy way to create or connect to data, XAF offers the flexibility of reuse once the object model is created. Where XAF offers support for the traditional desktop and ASP.Net market, LightSwitch supports the emerging Silverlight technology. Where LightSwitch offers the ease of exporting data to Microsoft Office for reporting and analysis purposes, XAF offers a full and rich reporting experience through XtraReports. Clearly these two tools offer the developer the best hope in the fight against corporate take over by marauding desktop applications. Wherever you are fighting this battle, you’ll find us here to help. 