Microsoft LightSwitch Turns on the Power of Rapid App Development

LightSwitch is a rapid application development (RAD) tool created by Microsoft. In its original version, released in 2010, any applications you created with it ran under the Silverlight runtime. But with the advent of HTML5, Microsoft decided to step LightSwitch up a notch and give it the ability to create HTML5 applications without needing Silverlight. That opens up a lot of doors for developers. LightSwitch is incredibly easy to use, and the resulting applications have a definite Windows 8 look to them. The resulting apps also perform nicely on mobile browsers. The apps you develop can connect to several different types of databases, and from there, you can quickly create screens that are easily navigable. Your users can then browse the data and add new data using simple forms. Under the hood, you can even drop down to the code level and write C# code to enhance the app even more. What follows are screenshots of the development tool itself as well as screens of a running app.