SharePoint Apps with LightSwitch

Visual Studio LightSwitch Install

There are two basic options available for installing Visual Studio LightSwitch. If you already have Visual Studio Professional 2010, you can install LightSwitch as an add-in. If not, you have the option of installing Visual Studio LightSwitch as a stand-alone tool. Microsoft offers a 90-day trial version of LightSwitch, which you can download from their download center. Be aware that the trial actually lasts for 30 days, and you can register for an additional 60 days.

The main SharePoint VM mentioned earlier comes with Visual Studio 2010 Professional installed. It does have SP1 installed, which is a prerequisite for installing Visual Studio LightSwitch. As of this writing, there is one additional action that must be taken before running the Visual Studio LightSwitch install program. One of the steps accomplished by the installation process is to install SQL Server Express 2008. This step will fail as a part of the LightSwitch installer when executed on the SharePoint VM. It is possible to download the SQL Server Express 2008 installer and run it separately (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ff978728.aspx?wt.mc_id=MEC_36_1_5). SQL Server Express 2008 is required by Visual Studio LightSwitch, so you must successfully install it before moving on.

Two things are required to make this work. First, you have to run the SQL Server Express 2008 setup program with administrator privileges. The easiest way to do this is to simply right-click on the ...