ADO.NET Data Services To Get Update, 'Astoria' Offline Services Explored

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The ADO.NET Data Services team has announced that ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 is will be made available as a community preview and an early preview of 'Astoria' Offline for disconnected scenarios with Web services has been released.

ADO.NET Data Services shipped as part of .NET Framework 3.5 SP 1 so you could create flexible data services that are naturally integrated with the web. The consumers of your services use URIs to point to pieces of data and simple, well-known formats to represent that data, such as JSON and plain XML.

Updated to ADO.NET Data Services Coming

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP1 is a tech preview of the next release of ADO.NET Data Services. The release (v1.5) will target the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 & Silverlight 2 platforms and provide new client and server side features for data service developers.

This release (v1.5 CTP1) is a standalone release and represents our in progress work towards the next version of the ADO.NET Data Service technology we shipped in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.  The release will be made available on Microsoft downloads.

The update includes enhancements to data binding, row count, feed customization, server drive paging, enhanced BLOG support, a new Data Service Provider, and bug fixes.

Mike Flasko, Program Manager, announced the upcoming release on his blog, Announcing ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP1, where you can find additional information.

'Astoria' Offline Exploration Release

'Astoria' Offline sits at the intersection between Data Services, Sync Framework, SQL Express/Compact and the Entity Framework. It provides an end-to-end solution for authoring of offline applications that use data from data services, either within a corporate network or across the Internet. Pablo Castro, the architect, describes the goals of the preview, "As the announcement says, this is not an “official” product or anything like that, but more like an early experiment to understand the problem space."

The community preview is a very early release to explore what a great offline story means for services. The release includes a step-by-step walkthrough to create an offline-enabled application. The walkthrough provides an exploration of the infrastructure and how it can be used to build applications. Additionally, a complete example of an offline-enabled application is included in the download.

For more information, see the team's blog posting, Announcing Project Codename “Astoria Offline”, Alpha Preview.  To download the early release, see Project Codename "Astoria Offline", Alpha Preview. Note: 'Astoria' Offline works with .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and not ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP1 mentioned above.