LightSwitch Community & Content Rollup–September 2012

Last year I started posting a rollup of interesting community happenings, content, samples and extensions popping up around Visual Studio LightSwitch. If you missed those rollups you can check them all out here: LightSwitch Community & Content Rollups.

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Visual Studio 2012 Launch Event

imageIn August, engineering was completed on Visual Studio 2012 and we released the download to the web. In September, marketing organized the launch events and created a website where you can download short demonstrations on all the new features. Our very own Joe Binder from the LightSwitch team did a demo on some of the new features you can find in Visual Studio 2012.

Watch: Building Business Applications with LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012

Download: Visual Studio 2012 Trial

Get Started with LightSwitch (Articles, Samples, Starter Kits, and more)

New “How Do I” Videos Released

In August we revamped the LightSwitch Developer Center and merged it with the Visual Studio Developer Center so content would be easier to find. In September we released new “How Do I” videos on the center that teach you some of the new features of this release. This is just a start and I promise I’m recording more :-).

How Do I: Get Started with the LightSwitch Starter Kits?

In this video, see how you can get a jump start building applications using the LightSwitch Starter Kits. Starter Kits are project templates that help get you started building specific LightSwitch applications. You can download them right from the within Visual Studio and once installed they show up in your “New Project” dialog. Using the Starter Kits can help you learn about LightSwitch as well as get you started off right with a basic data model, queries and screens that you can customize further.

 

How Do I: Consume OData Services in a LightSwitch App?

One of the new features added to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012 is the ability to consume OData services. Odata stands for "Open Data Protocol" and is a standard protocol for accessing data over the web. Many businesses use OData today as a means of exchanging data easily. In this video, see how you can take advantage of OData services in order to enhance your application's functionality.

 

How Do I: Create OData Services with LightSwitch?

One of the new features added to LightSwitch in Visual Studio 2012 is the ability to create OData services. Odata stands for "Open Data Protocol" and is a standard protocol for accessing data over the web. OData services can then be consumed from a variety of clients from a variety of platforms. In this video, see how you can create and expose smart data services to other clients using LightSwitch.

 

And as we add more videos you can find them on the “How Do I?” video page here -- so check back often!

Events Coming Up

We’ve got some events coming up where the team will be speaking on LightSwitch. I’ll be touring eastern Canada in December and the tour is still coming together so I’ll add more locations & details as those materialize. Hope to see you there!

More Notable Content this Month

Extensions ( see over 100 of them here! ):

Samples ( see all 89 of them here ):

Team Articles:

Community Articles:

Huge shout out to Paul van Bladel for pumping out so many articles this month!

LightSwitch Team Community Sites

Become a fan of Visual Studio LightSwitch on Facebook. Have fun and interact with us on our wall. Check out the cool stories and resources. Here are some other places you can find the LightSwitch team:

LightSwitch MSDN Forums
LightSwitch Developer Center
LightSwitch Team Blog
LightSwitch on Twitter (@VSLightSwitch, #VS2012 #LightSwitch)

Enjoy!