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Hierarchical data is usually used to display data in a tree. The data typically is in a single table that is self-referencing, meaning it has one property that points to other records in the same table. This is how it is able to track the parent-child relationship between records. A Tree Control is usually used to visualize hierarchical data.

Karol Zadora-Przylecki (Microsoft) created an example, and included important code required by LightSwitch when using a Silverlight Tree Control. You can see the original post here: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/lsextensibility/thread/bcdaa86f-459a-47d3-853a-3c5e56eb088a. In this article, we will follow the concepts outlined by that post.

Note: If you are new to LightSwitch, it is suggested that you start here: Online Ordering System (An End-To-End LightSwitch Example)

LightSwitch is a powerful application builder when you use WCF RIA Services and Silverlight Custom Controls (or Silverlight Control Extensions). Otherwise, it is merely just a fast and easy application builder. In order to be fast and easy, LightSwitch has it’s limitations. However,...

If you are not a Silverlight programmer, LightSwitch is still easy to use. You just need to use LightSwitch Control Extensions. It is important to note the difference between a Silverlight Custom Control, and a LightSwitch Control Extension.

Karol Zadora-Przylecki covers the difference in the article “Using Custom Controls to Enhance Your LightSwitch Application UI” (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lightswitch/archive/2011/01/13/using-custom-controls-to-enhance-lightswitch-application-ui-part-1.aspx).

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Note: You must have Visual Studio Professional (or higher) to complete this tutorial

Telerik has a differentiating LightSwitch control in their Rich Text Editor Control. It allows you to create compelling LightSwitch applications. It allows your end-users to create, import and export Microsoft Word documents. It also contains many other features.

In this example, we will build a small application that allows rich notes to be entered for people.

First, Install the Telerik controls...

Note: If you are new to LightSwitch, it is suggested that you start here: Online Ordering System (An End-To-End LightSwitch Example)

Note: You must have Visual Studio Professional (or higher) to complete this tutorial

LightSwitch is a powerful application builder, but you have to get your data INTO it first. Usually this is easy, but in some cases, you need to use WCF RIA Services to get data into LightSwitch that is ALREADY IN LightSwitch.

LightSwitch operates on one Entity (table) at a time. A Custom Control will allow you to visualize data from two entities at the same time, but inside LightSwitch, each Entity is always separate. This can be a problem if you want to, for example, combine two Entities into one.

LightSwitch wont do...

ComponentsOne’s OLAP For LightSwitch, is a “pivoting data analyzer” control that plugs into LightSwitch. It has been called the ‘Killer App’ for LightSwitch.



You can download the demo at this link:

http://www.componentone.com/SuperProducts/OLAPLightSwitch/



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So you have deployed your LightSwitch application and everything is running fine. Then you get an email that a user is unable to perform a function. The problem you now have is that this is a problem that you can only see in production. When you need to preform debugging of a LightSwitch application in production, you want to use Tracing.



Getting the Most Out of the Save Pipeline in Visual Studio LightSwitch by Dan Seefeldt (http://www.code-magazine.com/articleprint.aspx?quickid=1103071), is...

It is easy to create a LightSwitch application using your own custom user interface (UI), composed entirely of Silverlight Custom Controls. The article This Is How LightSwitch Does MVVM, covers the basics of how you bind Silverlight Custom Controls to LightSwitch Properties and Collections. The article at this link,...

This article describes how you can upload files using LightSwitch, and store them on the server hard drive. This is different from uploading files and storing them in the server database.

If you want to upload files and store them in the database, see How Do I: Import and Store a Data File by Matt Sampson.



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