14 DAY TRIAL // The first Beta development milestone of Visual Studio LightSwitch is now available for download. However, at this point in time, Microsoft is not exactly offering LightSwitch Beta 1 to all early adopters eager to take the tool out for a spin.
Instead, Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 1 is only available to developers with a MSDN subscription, according to the Redmond company.
There are two downloads live on MSDN for subscribers, namely Visual Studio LightSwitch, Beta 1 (x86) - DVD (English) and Visual Studio LightSwitch, Web Install Beta 1 (x86) - (English).
Microsoft unveiled Visual Studio LightSwitch recently, noting that it is a new development tool aimed at customers that need a very simple way of building business applications, to the point where they can do away with any coding.
“LightSwitch simplifies the development process, letting you concentrate on the business logic and doing much of the remaining work for you. By using LightSwitch, an application can be designed, built, tested, and in your user’s hands quickly,” Microsoft promises.
While for the time being only MSDN subscribers get to play with Visual Studio LightSwitch Beta 1, fact is that come next week, Microsoft will offer the Beta Build to all testers.
According to Beth Massi, Visual Studio Community, LightSwitch Beta 1 is planned for public release on Monday, August 23rd.
“Most business applications are forms-over-data applications, that is, a user interface for viewing, entering and editing data,” the Redmond company said.
“With most development tools, much your time is spent doing the same task repeatedly. You write code to interact with a database, you write code for the user interface, and you write code for business logic.
“By using LightSwitch , much of the work is already done for you. In fact, it is possible to create a LightSwitch application without writing a single line of code. For most applications, the only code you have to write is the code that only you can write: the business logic,” the software giant explained.
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