Wiley Beginning Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Development 978-1-1180-2195-8 User Manual

 

➤

Coping with the main challenges of line-of-business software 
development

 

➤

Understanding how application prototyping can help you cope with 
those challenges

 

➤

Understanding rapid application development, and how it is related 
to Visual Studio LightSwitch

Microsoft is known as a company delivering great development tools. To create data-centric 
applications, for a long time, Microsoft has been offering only two tools that target separate 
audiences:

 

➤

Visual Studio is to be used by a wide range of developers from students and hobbyists, 
to enterprise developers and architects.

 

➤

Microsoft Access (a part of the Offi ce Plus bundle) provides an easy-to-use approach to 
create data-centric applications for users with very basic development skills.

With Visual Studio, a wide range of applications can be created from the smallest console 
utilities to highly scalable web applications. The price of this freedom and scalability is that 
developers must invest a relatively high amount of work to create their applications. Although 
Visual Studio provides a number of productivity enhancement functions to create data-centric 
applications, using them requires advanced programming knowledge.

In contrast to Visual Studio, Microsoft Access requires only basic development skills. 
The simplicity of Access allows users without strong development backgrounds to create 

C01.indd   3

C01.indd   3

14/06/11   6:28 PM

14/06/11   6:28 PM