I’m a hardcore coder who is into design patterns and best practices. But sometimes, you just need to crank out a simple little application for someone to manage a database of employees or orders… maybe both! Recently, some of use have turned to ASP.NET Dynamic Data for scaling websites, but websites aren’t always the best solution. What if your client really wants a desktop application with rich functionality like exporting to Excel? Introducing the next wave of application scaling: LightSwitch!

As I said, I’m really into patterns and practices. I wouldn’t use this to design an enterprise architecture, and it wasn’t meant for that. However, LightSwitch is really great at plugging into an existing enterprise infrastructure and generating a useful application. As I watched the demo (keynote from VSLive and parts available at the website), I noticed three sources of data you could choose from: SQL Server, SharePoint, and RIA Services. If you’re building a standalone application, you can design your tables from scratch as well.

After you select your data, you select an option to generate views from your data. It is quite a simple design experience, and when you’re done you have a fully functional application with full data validation. Since it’s built on Silverlight, it even looks good! There are even extensibility points if you need to add custom code (only VB or C# at this time).

I sometimes get requests to write little applications to access data sources in a different manner than the primary applications. With LightSwitch, I know I will be able to do so quickly and get back to more interesting challenges. The beta will be available on the website on August 23rd.

You can’t escape twitter without someone becoming the mayor of your favorite bar. So I wasn’t surprised to find that one of the most complete examples of a Windows Phone app is foursquare. Here are screenshots, courtesy of CodePlex.

I’m a little amused that they need to clarify it’s “an alpha release, even though everything works.” Of course it’s an alpha release; Windows Phone isn’t out yet, and the tools are still in CTP!

The team promises a cleaner version of the code in the following months. They rushed to get it out in time for the MIX 2010 Keynote.

Although it’s near complete, I’d wait for an update to the current toolset before using this a guide for creating a Windows Phone app. However, the nonrestrictive MIT license means you can use this code freely as a reference in designing your own application.

The author of ASP.NET 3.5 Website Programming: Problem - Design - Solution came to our town to talk about the lessons learned from developing with the Entity Framework with the Beer House project. It was great, and I had to purchase the book when it became available! He walks you through developing a real-life application in ASP.NET 3.5 using the Entity Framework; no impractical examples here.

Many developers dive into writing an application without giving consideration to the overall architectural concerns that are necessary for a well-designed web application. Chris Love walks you through these concerns from the multiple application tiers to logging, instrumentation, and finally deployment.

I am currently a fan of ASP.NET MVC, but if you're still programming Web Forms, and many are, this is the book for you.