LightSwitch is now available for trial download (apart from in China where Microsoft hope to make it available soon) and goes on sale from Microsoft on July 28th and from other resellers on August 1st.

When Microsoft first announced LightSwitch it talked of it enabling "non-programmers" to build business applications a claim we described as "silly".

After a year in beta it is finally available as a commercial product and is now described as:

a flexible, business application development tool that aides developers of all skill levels to quickly create and deploy desktop and web business applications. 

It comes with Starter Kits for the following standard applications:

• Budget Manager
• Customer Service
• Expense Tracker
• Issue Tracker
• Job Candidate Tracker
• Performance Review
• Status Report
• Time Tracker

There's a video for each of these that shows how to use them and also shows and discusses the source code and its functionality.

There are third party extensions that increase LightSwitch's flexibility - and of course as a .NET developer you can extend it using C# or VB.NET.

You can check out Microsoft's promo video below.

More Information

LightSwitch site

Further Reading

LightSwitch Beta 2

LightSwitch - the developer's take

Microsoft Light Switch Beta ships early - First Look

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