Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Development [Paperback]

Tim Leung (Author), Yann Duran (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 26, 2012 | ISBN-10: 1430240083 | ISBN-13: 978-1430240082 | Edition: 1

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is a rapid application deployment tool that lets power users and administrators build data-centric business applications for the desktop, cloud, and Web in just a few clicks, with no code required. But more advanced developers and business users will hunger for more: how do you design complex screens? How do you query data using LINQ and other syntax structures? How do you secure your application?

Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Development answers these questions and more as authors Tim Leung and Yann Duran—both awarded Microsoft 2011 Community Contributor Awards for their LightSwitch expertise—cover this breakthrough product and its operations and structure under the covers.

For serious developers building, enhancing and deploying advanced business applications using LightSwitch, Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 Development is the guide for going beyond the "click-and-you're-done" interface, while still maintaining the elegance and convenience of rapid application development.

What you’ll learn

With Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011, learn how to:

• Add visibility through with Relationships and Details screens
• Use customized queries, sorts and filters, and reporting
• Customize displays via user controls
• Use multiple line-of-business data sources to aggregate reports

For more advanced LightSwitch users, see how to:

• Handle events in code and debug applications
• Master the intricacies of complex user interface design 
• Secure your applications through authentication
• Write custom .NET code to enhance LightSwitch
• Deploy maintainable LightSwitch projects

Who this book is for

Pro Visual Studio LightSwitch 2011 is a book designed for any software developer who wants to take advantage of the rapid application deployment (RAD) experience offered by LightSwitch. It is ideal reading for those wanting to build and design applications correctly from the onset.

Those who have grasped the basics of LightSwitch and are looking to do more will benefit greatly from this book. Anyone struggling to design complex screens and queries in order to meet user requirements will find the answers in this book.

Table of Contents

Part One - LightSwitch Concepts        

1    Forms Over Data, and Beyond

2    Working With Visual Studio

Part Two - Working With Data        

3    Designing Data

4    Accessing Data

5    Validating Data

6    Querying Data

Part Three – Interacting with Data

7    Creating and Using RIA Services

8    Creating and Using Screens

9    Creating and Using Custom Controls

10    Creating and Using Extensions

Part Four - Getting Data Out        

11    Creating and Displaying Reports

12    Creating and Sending Emails

Part Five - Securing Your Application        

13    Authenticating Your Users

14    Authorizing Your Users

15    Auditing What Your Users Do

Part Six - Deployment

16    Deploying Your Application

17    When Things Don't Go Quite Right

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Tim Leung is a professional software developer based in England. For the past 12 years, he has specialized in enterprise application development using products from the Microsoft technology stack. In particular, he possesses deep knowledge of the Microsoft .NET Framework and SQL Server. He is an active member of the U.K. developer community and often delivers presentations on technical topics. He is also a chartered member of the British Computer Society. He is passionate about the concept of rapid application development and was awarded the Microsoft Community Contributor Award in 2011 for contributions to the LightSwitch community.

Yann Duran is a self-employed, self-taught software developer, based in Australia, who has been involved in writing software, in one form or another, for over 25 years. He started with hand-assembling Z80 assembly code on his Tandy Model 16 computer (dual 8” disk drives, 64K RAM) in the early 80’s, then taught himself a raft of software technologies in the following years. These include Turbo Pascal, MS Access (VBA), SQL Server (T-SQL) , VB.NET, WinForms, Entity Framework (EF), Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and finally LightSwitch. Yann has been passionate about programming since he was in High School, in the days before the PC arrived, where “computers” were actually programmable calculators with punch cards and magnetic strips, and huge mainframes. He has also worked in computer sales, delivering software seminars and IT support, but programming has always remained his passion. Yann has been active in the LightSwitch community since Beta 1, and was awarded the Microsoft Community Contributor Award in 2011 for his contributions to that community.

Product Details

• Paperback: 736 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (March 26, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430240083
• ISBN-13: 978-1430240082
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 1.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #182,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Book But... April 28, 2012

By TriState VBA Guy

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The material in this book is excellent. What is here is hard to find anyplace else and the authors obviously have much to contribute to the Lightswitch community. Unfortunately, (and I really hope the authors read this review and do something about it), the sample application and tables which the authors use to explain everything in the book are never described in full. Instead, every time something else is explained, I see more fields I need to add or change or more tables I need to change or delete or whatever. It truly makes the excellent material almost useless. I was hoping files could be downloaded that would at least contain the tables and data that is needed to follow the examples, but unfortunately the files on the site are full of errors and cannot be successfully unzipped, so they are also useless. If there was just one complete database I could get that the authors used, I would rate the book a 5. Frankly, at 3 stars I'm giving it, I'm being very generous.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars very poor November 22, 2012

By Kev Koder

Format:Paperback

Unusually for an Apress book, this very poor offering is little more than the rearrangement of the material available from Microsoft, and its not well presented. The code samples are disorganised, and in some cases just plain broken. I believe the book and the samples were done separately, and perhaps at different times, in different counties. I regret buying it.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Waste of time, doesn't go into any detail June 9, 2012

By A Reviewer

Format:Paperback

This book suffers from some serious problems...

*) As the other reviewer mentioned, the authors introduce the sample application right at the beginning, but then never develop it. We don't see it build up from a simple start to a fully grown application, just a few snippets here and there that might as well have been randomly chosen. There wasn't any coherence to this at all, making the sample a waste of time.

*) Most of what's in this book is covered in the MSDN "Getting Started" videos, which they recommend you watch before reading the book. This is a waste of space, and could have been used for something more useful.

*) The stuff that's in the book on a more advanced level is really badly described. For example, one of the points of confusion for a lot of people is how the threading works, and when/why you need to use dispatchers. The authors mention the subject, don't go into any depth, and then go off onto something else. This is exactly the sort of information that is very important for someone looking to go from a beginner to intermediate level, and just wasn't covered properly. There are more examples like that throughout the book.

*) The chapter on creating your own extensions was a waste of time. Even the brief explanations on MSDN were better than this. At least they had sample code. This book shows you the code that the toolkit generates (why? we can see that for ourselves) and don't tell you what to do with it. They should have used the space for showing you how to create a sample of each extension, instead of wasting time and paper with something of no value at all.

All in all I wasn't impressed with this book. At almost $40, I would have expected something better. Don't waste your money.