Lightswitch Evaluation

Question

Has somebody already evaluated the new MS Silverlight RAD tool "Lightswitch"? Is it also suitable for developing complex applications? Can I use it without Silverlight knowledge? Is it so flexible, that I can also extend "Lightswitch appications" with own code (C#,XAML)?

Answer 1

Based on the videos it is certainly powerful for developing data-centric business applications (i.e. the majority of business application).

Re Silverlight: Only .Net knowledge is assumed for the basics, but it is always wise to have platform specific knowledge of a technology you want to deploy on.

Like any code gen tool, it will do simple stuff easily and anything not provided in-the-box will require more effort, however I feel they made a very smart move generating standard C# (or VB) .Net projects you can extend using knowledge you [likely] already have.

As the same type of business code has been written manually countless times I think this has a lot of potential for eliminating drudge coding work. We will certainly keep an eye on it and evaluate it in detail (especially with a view to cheaply replacing legacy apps).

Answer 2

Yes, I've been using LightSwitch for a while now, & there are several developers who are really pushing what LS can to to its limits.

While it was conceived as a "departmental" app tool, a number of professional developers (like myself) have recognised that it can be a very useful tool in our suite of development tools.

It is suitable for every complex situation? Not necessarily, but often it's more a matter of getting used to doing things the "LightSwitch" way, rather than how we may have done it in the past.

If you want more information, there's a fairly active MSDN forum, devoted to LS (currently Beta 2)

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/lightswitchgeneral/threads

Yann

Answer 3

It assumes that all “data rows” can be edited in isolation and therefore checks that a “row” is valid before letting the user “OK” the editor form.

In most cases this is not a problem, however if you have an application domain when the user need to edit “many” objects before the system becomes valid again, then Lightswich is unlikely to be a good option for you.