OData
Create and consume RESTful APIs in a simple and standard way
Latest posts
Using the Uniform Interface Exposed By Data Services
In some of our past posts, we've discussed one of the benefits of data services is that the interface to such a service is uniform. This means that how you interact with each service (issue a query, insert a new entity, etc) is the same across all services regardless of the schema being exposed. This uniform interface leads to one of the value propositions of data services, which is the ability to create reusable code for service consumption. That is, one can now write reusable client libraries, LINQ providers, app/UI components, widgets, etc that are able to work across any data service. ...
Astoria Content @ TechEd This Week
Are you at TechEd this week? If so, we have a few Astoria related sessions going on. If you are at the event and want to chat about Astoria, drop me a note or swing by one of the sessions: 6/4 8:30am-9:45am ADO.NET Data Services for the Web (aka "Project Astoria") by Mike Flasko 6/5 Noon-12:45pm ADO.NET Data Services Deep Dive by Mike Flasko We also have a booth and a number of EF related sessions. For more details on these, check out this post. -Mike Flasko ADO.NET Data Services Framework,&nb...
Securing Data Services
We have received a lot of questions lately about how to authenticate calls to an ADO.NET Data Service. Mike Taulty has created a nice post outlining some of the options for authenticating calls to data services. Check it out here: https://mtaulty.com/CommunityServer/blogs/mike_taultys_blog/archive/2008/05/27/10447.aspx -Mike Flasko ADO.NET Data Services Framework, Program Manager
Merge vs. Replace Semantics for Update Operations
So far Astoria has used “merge” semantics for update. That is, an “update” operation (an HTTP PUT request) replaces the values of the properties for the target entity that are specified in the input payload; this applies both to properties and links. If a property or link is not present in a PUT operation, it means “leave it with its current value”. To null-out a property or link it has to be present in the PUT body and has to have a null marker (null attribute for properties, null href for links). While supporting merge is important and will remain part of Astoria, there are scenarios where we need “replace” sem...
Interested in working on the ADO.NET Data Services Framework (aka “Astoria”) or XML?
Do you want to work on the next generation of data access APIs for the web? If so, the Astoria and XML teams are hiring. If you want to get a feel for the types of problems our team thinks about the solutions we build, check out the earlier posts on this blog as well as https://msdn.microsoft.com/data and http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml We have a range of job openings across disciplines (Development, Developer in Test and Program Management) available on the Astoria and XML teams. If you are interested in any of these positions, please send myself (mike.flasko@microsoft.com) and Andy Conrad (acon...
ADO.NET Data Services Framework Beta 1 is Live!
We are very excited to announce that .NET 3.5 SP1 Beta 1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 Beta 1 are now available! This beta marks the entry of the ADO.NET Data Services Framework as well as the ADO.NET Entity Framework as part of the overall .NET/Visual Studio product and will be the final beta before the RTM of both technologies. The remainder of this post will cover the changes and additions to the ADO.NET Data Services Framework since the last CTP in Dec 07. The Since our last CTP in Dec 2007 along with the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview, there have been a number of changes and added features....
Using REST Services in Silverlight 2
We have received a lot of feedback over the past few weeks asking when will be update the Silverlight library for data services. I thought I'd put up a short post to update everyone on where we are at and what our thinking is.... I'll start by saying we are targeting Beta 2 of the Silverlight SDK (no dates to announce for this just yet) to have a version of the client library for ADO.NET Data Services. Given that we use many of the core pieces of Silverlight to enable data service interaction, we've waited for those to come into the platform so that we can start to round out our Silverlight experience. The...
Optimistic Concurrency & Data Services
Different applications have different requirements around consistency and how concurrent modifications are handled. I’ll oversimplify and put all these applications in two buckets: either you care about controlling concurrent changes or you don’t. If you’re creating a REST interface to your data and don’t care about concurrency (e.g. no deep consistency rules, or nice units of change that change in whole consistent ways), then you can use the basic HTTP methods to retrieve (GET) and manipulate (POST, PUT, DELETE) resources directly without any more context than the representations of your resources. You get “last...
Astoria Online Service –> SQL Server Data Services
Around a year ago in the Mix 2007 conference we announced Project Astoria, an overall initiative to understand how data is used on the web and what frameworks, tools and services could we create to enable new and better applications in this space. Several things resulted from that effort already. One of these results is a unified pattern for exposing and manipulating data across various data-centric services using the Atom format and the AtomPub protocol, plus a set of common conventions for constructing URLs to point to resources. This pattern is shared by some Windows Live services as announced here and articu...