Where Do I Get Visual Studio LightSwitch 2012?

Acquiring LightSwitch 2012 (RC) is the easy part. At the time of writing this book, it is available only as a first-class citizen in Visual Studio 2012, which is still in Release Candidate phase and can be downloaded for free. When the RC period of Visual Studio is over, the RTM version will integrate LightSwitch as well, so you’re safe if you have an MSDN subscription or otherwise intend to purchase a license for Visual Studio Professional or above.

LightSwitch 1.0, called LightSwitch 2011 at the time, was initially released as an out-of-band release. Because of this, it was also made available as a separate purchase mainly targeting non-professional developers, costing about $199 per developer. In this stand-alone version, the Visual Studio shell is installed and some of the more advanced LightSwitch extensibility features are unavailable. According to the announced road map, this option will not be repeated for Visual Studio LightSwitch 2012.