SelecTViews
With Stephen Wynkoop and Sam Brace
Find out the latest news involving NewsGator’s Social Sites 2010 software, HTML5 development and more. In the "In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)" section, MVP Stephen Wynkoop answers questions about server consolidation. And Sam Brace, community manager for SSWUG.ORG, has an extensive interview with MVP Kevin Kline about cutting costs in the cloud, particularly with Microsoft Azure.
[Watch the Show]
Another 4GL – Lightswitch
I have been following some of the spin and developer community reaction to Microsoft Lightswitch with a lot of curiosity.
At then end of the day, Lightswitch appears to be another code generator, labeled by me as another 4th generation language. The dream of 4GLs, as they have been released for the last couple of decades, has been to allow rapid development of an application without having to code all the heavy lifting.
Anyone who has coded for more than a year knows that a lot of the code we write is repetitive. We quickly turn to code writing tools for things such as ORM (object relational mappers), business object developers, screens, etc. Sometimes we choose instead to roll our own software completely, or integrate custom code with generated code.
Lightswitch is built on the .Net platform, producing .Net code that can be customized manually. It uses the current frameworks and patterns for data connectivity and presentation. It is also template driven (similar to CodeSmith) so that the development framework is more open.
So what is the position of Lightswitch in the development community? Could it be used as a tool for ad-hoc reporting? Sharepoint with SQL Server Reporting Services has been the MS ad-hoc tool for a while. But enterprise wide or WWW enabled Sharepoint can be extremely expensive. Is this a position Lightswitch is trying to fill?
Aaron writes:
I don’t understand it. Have you looked at Lightswitch at all?
I built Office Web Components solutions at [various companies] that were SOOOOOOOO popular, I mean…I had 150,000 ad-hoc reports built using my platform.. and what happens next? GET THIS.. MS KILLED OWC, BUT THEY LOVE IT SO MUCH THEY INCLUDE IT AS A COMPONENTS INSIDE OF SSMS?
Do you see it being used as a prototyping tool as a proof of concept, or for writing departmental programs.
How are you going to respond when your boss comes in on Monday morning saying, I wrote this application over the weekend; you go turn it on in our production system?
What do you think? How is Lightswitch going to fit into your world? If you need a little more information about Lightswitch, try this link from Microsoft.
Share your thoughts with the rest of us. Send me an Email at btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
$$SWYNK$$
Featured Article(s)
Sharepoint (Part 2 of 3)
In this session, attendees will learn the basics of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS). This session will cover some of the basic use-cases for both WSS and MOSS, and will discuss when one should be chosen over the other. This session will also demonstrate a commercial application that is based on the MOSS platform.
Featured White Paper(s)
Storage Optimization
Written by AvePoint
Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, the latest release of M… (read more)
Featured Script
Process To Log SP usage and Times
Process that will all you to see when a sp is called and how long it takes to run, including any parameters and errors…. (read more)