This book is about developing SharePoint applications using Microsoft’s Visual Studio LightSwitch product. The overall goal of this book is to present enough information by way of worked examples to help you get started writing SharePoint applications using Visual Studio LightSwitch.
Microsoft offers Visual Studio LightSwitch as both a stand-alone product and as an add-on to the full version of Visual Studio. Most of the sample applications presented in this book can be completed using the basic version, with just a few exceptions. Any work involving the building of LightSwitch extensions requires the full version of Visual Studio. Building Silverlight controls is another case where you’ll need the full version. Microsoft does offer a trial version of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate if you just want to check it out.
While it would probably suffice to say this book is for any person interested in the Visual Studio LightSwitch product by itself, the focus is on building applications specifically targeted at SharePoint. Programming experience isn’t necessary, but I will look at writing code to add functionality to some of the examples. It’s entirely possible to build fully functional Visual Studio LightSwitch applications without writing a single line of code if that’s what you’re looking for.
Experienced programmers who are looking for a way to quickly and efficiently build stand-alone applications to interact with a SharePoint site should benefit from the book as well. The programming model is completely different from the typical SharePoint development cycle, so expect to see some new material. There are, however, enough similarities to building typical Windows Forms apps that you should be able to pick it up quickly enough.