Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Business Application Development

A jump-start guide to application development with Microsoft's Visual Studio LightSwitch

Jayaram Krishnaswamy

P U B L I S H I N G

professional expert ise dist i l led

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Business Application Development

Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

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First published: September 2011

Production Reference: 1050911

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-849682-86-2

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by David Gimenez (bilbaorocker@yahoo.co.uk)

Credits

AuthorJayaram Krishnaswamy

ReviewersMohit Chakraborty

Mihail Alexandrov Mateev

Acquisition EditorDhwani Devater

Development EditorDhwani Devater

Technical EditorsMohd. Sahil

Prashant Macha

Sakina Kaydawala

Copy EditorKriti Sharma

Project CoordinatorZainab Bagasrawala

IndexerHemangini Bari

ProofreaderJacqui McGhee

GraphicsNilesh Mohite

Production CoordinatorMelwyn D'sa

Cover WorkMelwyn D'sa

About the Author

Jayaram Krishnaswamy studied at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore India and Madras University in India and taught at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. He went to Japan on the basis of Japanese Ministry of Education Research scholarship to complete his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Nagoya University. He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Sydney University in Australia; a Government of India Senior Scientific Officer at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur; a Visiting Scientist at the Eindhoven Institute of Technology in the Netherlands; a Visiting Professor of Physics at the Federal University in Brazil; an Associate Research Scientist at a government laboratory in Sao Jose dos Campos in Sao Paulo, Brazil; a visiting scientist at the National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada before coming to the USA in 1985. He has also taught and worked at the Colorado State University in Fort Collins and North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He worked with the Northrop Grumman Corporation on a number of projects related to high energy electron accelerators / Free Electron Lasers. These projects were undertaken at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, NY and in the Physics Department at Princeton University, NJ. He has over 80 publications in refereed and non-refereed publications and eight issued patents. He is fluent in Japanese and Portuguese and lives in Plainsboro, New Jersey, USA. He is also an affiliate of the IEEE Computer Society and a Member of the American Physical Society.

He has been working in IT-related fields since 1997. He was once a Microsoft Certified Trainer in Networking and a Siebel Certified developer. He has worked with several IT related companies, such as the Butler International in their Siebel practice; with several IBM sub-contractors and smaller companies. Presently he is active in writing technical articles in the IT field to many online sites such as CodeProject.com, APSFree.com, DevShed.com, DevArticles.com, OfficeUsers.org, ASPAlliance.com, Egghead Café, SSWUG.org, Packt Article Network, databasedev.co.uk, cimaware.com, and many others. Between 2006 and 2010 he wrote more than 400 articles mostly related to database and web related technologies covering Microsoft, Oracle, Sybase, ColdFusion, Sun and other vendor products. He has also written two Microsoft Business Intelligence related books for Packt and a book on Microsoft SQL Azure. He regularly writes to his four blogs on Blogger; http://hodentek.blogspot.com; http://hodentekHelp.blogspot.com; http://hodentekMSSS.blogspot.com; and http://hodentekMobile.blogspot.com. He recently received Microsoft's Microsoft Community Contributor award for 2011.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Packt Publishing for giving me this opportunity to write a book for the fourth time and for their continuing encouragement. Dhwani Devater, the Senior Acquisition Editor for enterprise books, and my early contact for this book was most helpful and without her guidance and meticulous editing, this book would not have been possible. I am most grateful for her advice which she gave generously every step of the way.

I would like to thank Zainab Bagasrawala, the Project Coordinator, for having monitored the flow of correspondence successfully and for her timely reminders. I also would like to thank Dhwani Devater the Development Editor for this book for her valuable input and pointers which have added great value to the book. I would also like to thank the technical editors, Mohd. Sahil, Prashant Macha, and Sakina Kaydawala, in addition to many others at Packt. I also would like to thank Priya Mukherjee, the Project Manager at Packt for guiding me through the contract process, the very first step in writing this book. I thank my son for reading through the initial chapters and making suggestions and picking out errors.

I sincerely thank the reviewers, Mihail Mateev (http://blogs.infragistics.com/blogs/mihail_mateev/default.aspx) of Infragistics a major third-party developer for LightSwitch, and Mohit Chakraborty (http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Profile/mohit%20chakraborty?type=forum) of Microsoft. Their close association with LightSwitch and their deep knowledge of this product has enormously added value to my book that I can only humbly and sincerely acknowledge. Their pointed questions; their thorough reading of the manuscript; their corrections and well directed advice has made portions of this book more readable and clear. I'm appreciative of the efforts they have put in for this book.

I would like to thank my parents who would have shared my joy. I thank my brothers (Gopal and Vijay) and sisters, and the whole-hearted support of our Subbagiri family. I cannot sufficiently thank my wife Michiko Fukumoto, my son Krishna Jayaram and his wife Jannet Jayaram for their continuous encouragement.

Last but not the least I would like to thank Microsoft Corporation for making available evaluation software and allowing me to participate in their various events live as well as on the Web. I am most indebted to the MSDN forums, especially Visual Studio LightSwitch and Extensibility forums and their moderators ,both Microsoft and otherwise, and the various forum participants from whom I have received unstinted support.

About the Reviewers

Mihail Mateev is a senior software development engineer in Infragistics Inc. He worked as a Software developer and team leader on WPF and Silverlight Line of Business production lines of the company. Now he works like a Technical evangelist in the Infragistics. Mihail is also a consultant for the products of Infragistics, related to Visual Studio LightSwitch .

Mihail worked in various areas related to technology with Microsoft: Silverlight, WPF, Windows Phone 7, Visual Studio LightSwitch, WCF RIA Services, MS SQL Server and Windows Azure.

Mihail did presentations for .Net and Silverlight user groups in Bulgaria. He has experience with GIS system over .Net framework. He worked for more than five years in ESRI Bulgaria as a Software developer and a trainer. For several years Mihail lectures about Geographic Information Systems in the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics. Mihail is also a lecturer of Computer Systems in the University of the Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy in Sofia at Computer Aided Engineering Department. Mihail holds Master's degrees in Structural Engineering and Applied Mathematics and Informatics.

Over the past ten years, Mihail has written articles for Bulgarian Computer World magazine and blogs about .Net technologies. He is a contributor to "Professional Silverlight 4 (Willey)" and a reviewer of "Developing Business Applications with Visual Studio LightSwitch" (PACKT Publishing).

Thanks to Jason Beres—VP of Product Management, Community, and Evangelism at Infragistics, who proposed the possibility to starting of deal with LightSwitch. Thanks to Matt Van Horn (former Sr. Consultant at Infragistics, now a Sr. Consultant with Capax Global), who helped me to get into detail in LightSwitch shells. Thanks to Dean Guida—CEO and President of Infragistics, who gave me the opportunity to work for Infragistics and become consultant for LightSwitch-related products.

Mohit Chakraborty is a developer in the Visual Studio LightSwitch team. His work primarily focuses on the project system, build, and debugging experience and the extensibility system.

Before joining the current team he worked on developing Microsoft's Backup and recovery solution called Data Protection Manager. Before that he worked for Trilogy India where he worked on a Business Intelligence solution for the auto industry.

Mohit has done his M.Tech. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in 2004.

Dedicated to my late father to whom I owe everything. His life is an inspiration to all.