Astoria CTP Refresh for Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2!
Some time ago we shipped Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 and a couple of weeks later we added the ADO.NET Entity Framework Beta 2 release as well as the first CTP of the tools for it. Once all of the frameworks/tools were in Beta 2 we got a bunch of email “encouraging” us to release a Beta 2-compatible version of the Astoria CTP :-)
The Astoria September 2007 CTP is now available for download. This CTP is for the most part a refresh of the May CTP bits recompiled so they run with Visual Studio 2008/Entity Framework Beta 2. We did tweak here or there, but no new features were added. You can get the bits from here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=0FA1413C-CB55-4577-960E-0F3491847F58&displaylang=en
NOTE: let me stress that this is a refresh of the May CTP, which is based on the initial prototype of Astoria. All of the features/design options we’re discussing here in this blog (e.g. last post about payload formats) are in the context of the production version of Astoria which we are in the process of building. The production version incorporates a ton of feedback that we received over the last few months plus our own more detailed thinking of what should the system look like. So expect to see quite a few differences between the CTP and the production code once we start shipping the production version. The principles will all be the same, but the details will vary.
For completeness, here is a list of the changes in this CTP refresh:
· All components (server, library, tools, wizards) ported to Orcas Beta 2
· Components that interact with EDM schema files (CSDL files) updated to reflect changes in CSDL in Beta 2
· Binary properties are supported and properly handled by the server and client components
· Minor enhancements to the identity resolution support in client library (it is still a very simplistic implementation)
· Added support for the "res://..." syntax that is introduced in the Entity Framework for pointing at metadata in assembly resources (typically used in "website" projects)
· ClientEdmGen.exe now supports http authentication (use /u:<user> /p:<password>)
· Both "web site" and "web projects" Visual Studio solutions include the "Web Data Service" new item template
· Visual Studio Web Developer Edition is fully supported now (runtime and item templates are listed in the VS UI and work as expected)
· The client library now supports asynchronous execution in the non-Silverlight version (it was already there in the Silverlight one)
· The client library for Silverlight is now included in the package (Microsoft.Astoria.SilverlightClient.dll)
· All the samples have been ported to use Beta 2 projects and the visual EDM schema designer
So if you’re using Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2 now you can give Astoria a try; if you were using Astoria before, you can finally use it in Beta 2. In any case, we look forward to hearing your feedback!
Pablo Castro
Technical Lead
Microsoft Corporation
http://blogs.msdn.com/pablo
