TO THOSE OF US WHO PAY ATTENTION to such things, the world of software development has changed a lot in the last few years. In the .NET world, Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 is undoubtedly the most successful development environment. Since the release of the fi rst .NET version in February 2002, this product has undergone dramatic changes. Currently, it encapsulates three languages (Visual Basic, C#, and F#) and many tools that support the entire life cycle of software development.

It provides great freedom for developers to create virtually any type of application for many devices, including desktops, portable devices, and phones; and now it supports cloud applications. Given the globalization of business and rapid changes in the world economy, the importance of fast time-to-market requirements continuously affects how software products — and especially line-of-business (LOB) applications — are developed.

While Visual Studio supports development teams, it still requires jumping over a relatively high entry barrier. Writing versatile business applications with this tool defi nitely requires deep software development knowledge — in exchange for the freedom it offers.

Visual Studio LightSwitch is a new member of the Visual Studio family. It was designed and developed with rapid data-centric LOB application development in mind. It targets primarily consultants and business analysts who are far removed from everyday programming — and not just experienced developers.

This book serves as a foundation for learning the basics of creating useful business applications with LightSwitch — using only minimal coding.