What limitations are you running into with LightSwitch

Question

I've played only briefly with LightSwitch and while it looks like it could be a great framework for internal applications, I'm worried it will be like so many other tools that promised simple-to-create applications but once you varied at all from the most basic application, it became much more arduous than just doing it with a more traditional language/framework (i.e. .NET).

So, I'm wondering where are people getting stuck? How hard is it to deal with complexity as it arises? How extensible is it? Is it worth looking at now or better to wait until the next beta?

Schoenfeld

Answer 1

I have not yet run into any wall, but the customization hooks based on themes are a real pain. Also, beware that you cannot unit-test any code you add to the LightSwitch project.

Digital

-1: You can definately unit test code you add! if you add it directly in sure, but you should be putting it in a seperate Silverlight compatible assembly and then adding a reference to that in your LS project and then calling that. – Crochet

Sure, but as soon as the code needs anything related to the entities, screens, etc, you can't. – Digital

And that was exactly what I meant by "add to the LightSwitch project". What was the reason for the down vote?! – Digital

Gustavo, you cant but you cant really init test any ui application (unless you use BDD style), lightswitch is only really a control library imo designed to address how you access the data. If you write RIA webservices instead of drag and drop queries you can unit test these no? – Botha

Answer 2

As with all systems of this nature, you're going to run into problems when you need to customize any of the default behaviour.

One such example is if you try and change the way that the queries for parent -> child relationships are executed as explained in this article http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/08/25/analyzing-lightswitch-data-access-behavior.aspx

Cronyism

I think you answer is poorly worded, you are comparing "systems of this nature" to the ORM Lightswitch uses. All ORM's have their own ways of calling and very few allow control of it. – Crochet

Answer 3

LightSwitch V1 is initially targeted at non-developers, "departmental" apps etc, but they have provided many points where you can, if you want or need, drop down into code for slightly more advanced situations. You can also use just about any SilverLight control as a "custom control", or you can create your own custom SilverLight controls. You can also create custom "extensions" if you need to go even deeper.

A number of professional developers (myself included) have recognised that LS is a very handy tool to get to know & use. This interest from developers will hopefully help drive where LS heads in future versions. B2, the current version, has a Go-Live license & there are a number of us building fairly large apps right now.

There were no new features added between beta 2 and RTM (some features were tweaked though), but there has been a LOT of feedback for the team to take on board & include in V2.

There's a fairly active MSDN forum, where you can ask questions & get help from users, developers, & LS team members.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en/lightswitchgeneral/threads

Pneumo

Could you provide a reference for "non-developers"? Considering it is in VS and you will write code trying to figure out what non-developer would cope. – Crochet

Answer 4

Biggest issue I have had is performance limitations due to the SQL queries that are generated. On large tables (> 10million records) performance isn't great, however it can be argued that the scope of Lightswitch is not for massive systems like that but rather deptmental solutions where the datasets are expected to be lower.

Most of the real limitations in Lightswitch though, aren't Lightswitch issues but general Silverlight issues. For example the limited WCF support is a problem in an enterprise app.

Crochet

I will bet that those poorly-performing queries can be sped up by optimizations done in SQL, in particular, indexes added. Contact me if interested. (Reply here @Juvenescence ). – Juvenescence