The first CTP of the production version of ADO.NET Data Services is now available for download here as part of the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions preview release.

We are referring to this as the "first CTP" because the releases of Astoria prior to this were based on a prototype code base which we used to iterate quickly and explore the requirements of data services on the web. As outlined in the last post on this blog, we have since started from scratch, engineering the product from the ground up using the lessons and requirements learned from our prototype iterations.

The following features are in this CTP:

• Support to create ADO.NET Data Services backed by:
  • A relational database by leveraging the Entity Framework. 
  • Any data source (file, web service, custom store, application logic layer, etc)
• Serialization Formats:
  • Industry standard AtomPub serialization
  • JSON serialization
• Business Logic & Validation
  • Insert custom business/validation logic into the Request/response processing pipeline
  • simple infrastructure to build custom access policy 
• Access Control
  • Easily control the resources viewable from a data service
• Simple HTTP interface
  • Any platform with an HTTP stack can easily consume a data service
  • Designed to leverage HTTP semantics and infrastructure already deployed at large
• Client libraries:
  • .NET Framework
  • ASP.NET AJAX
  • Silverlight (coming soon)

To learn more about ADO.NET Data Services, check out the docs at http://astoria.mslivelabs.com and the howto docs posted here.

-Mike Flasko

Program Manager, ADO.NET Data Services (aka "Project Astoria")