Live Mesh CTP Provides Write Once, Run Many

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Live Mesh technical preview has been announced and is offered by invitation only to participants in the US. The preview is designed to provide feedback about the platform. To learn more about Live Mesh and sign up for the wait list, visit www.mesh.com. There's a Live Mesh preview screencast for developers.

That said, there's a lot to pay attention to with Live Mesh as a development platform.

Live Mesh provides a seamless platform for you to build applications that integrate rich content, information, and people while working on a broad range of devices. It just works. Live Mesh is a platform that allows rich, interactive applications to be built once and run the same in the cloud and on all connected devices such as browsers, desktops, embedded, and mobile.

In many ways, the Live Mesh platform comensates for the weaknesses in web applications and rich client application without diluting their strengths. For example, a web based Mesh Application written for Live Mesh can gain online/offline capabilities without sacrificing its viral distribution capability or its anywhere access. Similarly, a rich client Mesh Application gains anywhere access and easy of deployment without sacrificing richness nor its ability to take full advantage of powerful hardware.

The platform consists of a few key components: core services, an API, an extensible data model, a flexible application model.

The platform core is all about services, including Live Services that can be accessed using the Live Mesh API. Services include storage, membership, sync, peer-to-peer communication, newsfeed, and others in the works. The programming model is the same in the cloud and all connected devices. This means a Live Mesh app works the same regardless of running in the cloud, in a browser, deskip of mobile.

You'll interact with Live Mesh Data Model using a RESTful API. All resources are contained in feeds, and add feeds are addressable through standard URLs. AtomPub is used to expose GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE operations on Live Mesh resources.

A basic data model is provided for common tasks. You can customize and extend the data model for your application. The data model consists of:

  • Mesh Object consists of datafeeds, members, and custom objects.
  • Identity that processes all identity requests.
  • News that aggregates complex information.
  • Device management for devices connected to the Mesh.

You can choose what application development model is best fit for your needs.

  • Application Programming Interface (API) for Live Mesh.
  • Mesh Application which is a packaged, self-contained Live Mesh application hosted by Microsoft. No web infrastructure or servers are needed. You'd simply build a Mesh Application, upload it to Microsoft Live Mesh server,and it is ready for any Live Mesh user to install and use.

For more information, see Live Mesh. Also there's these screencasts on Live Mesh.

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