ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview Released
As I mentioned at the ASP.NET 3.5 session in London last week, the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions were due their first preview release. Well instead of Friday last week it looks like it shipped on Sunday. One interesting aspect that I hadn't appreciated and was chewing over with MikeT earlier was that it looks like the ADO.NET Entity Framework may ship as part of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions to enable ADO.NET Data Services (formerly codename "Astoria"). They'll ship in the same timeframe at least. So in total the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions look like:
- AJAX Enhancements
- History support, content linking etc
- ASP.NET Model View Controller (MVC) framework
- Structured application architecture offering separation of concerns between data and UI (model and view)
- ASP.NET Dynamic Data Support
- Flexible scaffolding framework for rapid development of data-driven sites
- ASP.NET Silverlight controls
- New controls to allow easy integration of Silverlight content into ASP.NET sites. The <asp:media> control gives you a cross-platform media player - just point it at a suitable media file.
- ADO.NET Data Services
- Expose your data via REST based API endpoints for easy consumption in AJAX, Silverlight and other types of applications.