Data

VS2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 Announced Today!

2009-10-20T00:59:44Z

Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 are now available for download by MSDN subscribers and will available to the rest of the world on Wednesday. Beta 2 as well the VS2010 Launch date of March 22, 2010 were announced this morning on Soma’s blog.

Included in Beta 2 are some great new features and updates for both the Entity Framework 4 and ADO.NET Data Services 4. For more information check out our post on the ADO.NET team blog.

Thank you,

Elisa Flasko
Program Manager,
Data & Modeling Group

Microsoft wants to hear your opinion

2009-10-03T00:59:12Z

It is this time of the year when our product team takes a step back, reviews the priorities and goals for the long term and identifies areas that we want to investment in.

We view YOU and your organization as a key stakeholder in this process and would like to gather your inputs in this survey, which should take no more than 5 - 10 minutes, and a few other surveys that we will conduct in the next few months. The feedback you provide is very valuable and rest assured that each and every response will be read and will provide the background for some of the key decisions that will benefit our user community - developers, DBAs and all those who use SQL Server.

This survey will be open for your submissions until October 21, 2009 and can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ZyUzG1TqA30QaEgAS9FYuQ_3d_3d.

Thanks,

Luiz Fernando Santos
Program Manager, Managed Providers

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 available for download

2009-09-01T21:34:34Z

ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 CTP2 is now available for download! This is the second tech preview release of the next version of ADO.NET Data Services. This release (v1.5) will target the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 & Silverlight 3 platforms and provide new client and server side features for data service developers.

What’s included in CTP2?

This release includes updates to the features that were in the CTP1 release of ADO.NET Data Services v1.5 plus a few additional new features and a number of bug fixes including:

Projections
Data Binding updates
Feed Customization (aka "Web Friendly Feeds") updates
Server Driven Paging (SDP) client library support
Enhanced BLOB Support client library support
Request Pipeline
"Data Service Provider" Interface updates

For more information and to watch the Getting Started video check out the Announcement on the ADO.NET Data Services Team Blog.

Thank you,
Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability

Announcing the php toolkit for ado.net data services

2009-08-21T19:19:00Z

This morning the Microsoft Interoperability team announced the release of a new project that bridges PHP and.NET: the PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services. The toolkit makes it easier for PHP developers to connect to and take advantage of services built using ADO.NET Data Services. The PHP Toolkit for ADO.NET Data Services is an open source project and is available today on Codeplex at phpdataservices.codeplex.com

For an overview and quick demo of the toolkit check out the Channel9 video with Pablo Castro and Claudio Caldato, Senior Program Manager with the Interoperability Technical Strategy team.

For more information on the toolkit check out the Interoperability Teams blog post and phpdataservices.codeplex.com.

- Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability

ODBC DM 3.80 in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

2009-07-07T02:45:00Z

We’re excited to announce that version 3.8 of the Microsoft ODBC DM (Driver Manager) will be released in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

What’s New In Version 3.80?

Compared to ODBC 3.5x, there are four major improvements in ODBC 3.80.

Streamed Output Parameters

In ODBC 3.5x, applications can only use SQLBindParameter to bind a buffer to an output parameter of a stored procedure. When working with large BLOB data objects, such as images, allocating an extremely large buffer may not be possible. ODBC 3.80 allows applications to retrieve BLOB output parameters in parts via SQLGetData.

ODBC C-Type Extensibility

The list of valid C-Types defined in the ODBC specification is the same for all ODBC drivers. Typically, data store manufacturers create new data types for new scenarios or new customer needs. Applications usually use the generic C-type SQL_C_BINARY to work with these new data-source specific types. ODBC 3.80 allows driver manufacturers to define their own C-Types. This means that a driver can define its own client-side type conversion rule for its new driver-specific data type, and thus provide a better developer experience.

Asynchronous Connection Operation

Before ODBC 3.80, asynchronous mode was only supported on statement operations, such as SQLExecDirect and SQLGetData. We extend this support to connection operations, such as SQLDriverConnect and SQLEndTran. ODBC 3.80 also allows applications to cancel connection operations, just as with SQLCancel on statement operations.

Asynchronous connection operations can significantly improve the performance of many large-scale, mission-critical applications, given the same amount of resources. For example, assume that you want to populate 100 connections in the pool at the application startup time so that all subsequence requests can be more efficiently served. Suppose it takes 1 second to make a connection to a remote server. You may be able to make 100 connections within a few seconds with asynchronous mode in a single-threaded application, compared to 100 seconds with the previous model! Interactive applications that take advantage of this new feature could, for example, render a progress bar, and also cancel long-running connection operations easily.

Better Management In ODBC Connection Pooling

ODBC Drivers are now notified when the ODBC Driver Manager puts a connection into the connection pool. This was previously opaque to the driver. Upon receiving the signal from the Driver Manager (via a newly introduced connection attribute SQL_ATTR_RESET_CONNECTION), a driver can reset some of its attributes to their default states. This can provide a more consistent behavior to an application when it reuses a connection from the pool.

For more detail about each of the above new features, you can download the Microsoft Windows SDK for Windows 7 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1: RC.

Why Update To Version 3.80?

Application compatibility was our highest priority when the ODBC 3.80 features were designed. Since the new features in ODBC 3.80 introduced new behavior, we upgraded the version to 3.80 from 3.5x (shipped on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008). This guarantees that:

- Existing ODBC drivers and applications (ODBC 2.0 or ODBC 3.x) will still work properly under Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

- ODBC 3.80 is optional for new development of drivers and applications.

When Can I Use These New Features?

For ODBC driver writers, the release candidates of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have these features. Try out the Win7 RC bits today!

For application developers, please read the SDK (link above) to better understand how these features may fit within your environment. At the moment, ODBC 3.80 drivers are not available; however, we are in contact with several driver vendors about supporting ODBC 3.80. Please work with your driver vendor to better understand their plan for ODBC 3.80 support.

Does SQLODBC Driver (Inside WDAC) Support ODBC 3.80?

No. SQLODBC is now in maintenance mode. Its sole purpose is for backward compatibility.

Pak-Ming Cheung

Microsoft Developer, WDAC team, Data Programmability

DataDirect Releases Beta Entity Framework Provider for Oracle

2009-05-01T20:27:52Z

DataDirect has released the much anticipated Beta of their DataDirect Connect for ADO.NET Entity Framework provider for Oracle!

DataDirect’s Beta release of its Entity Framework provider for Oracle offers:

100% managed code architecture
Superior performance and including integrated performance tunability wizards functional with the Entity Framework
7 x 24 phone, email, and web-based technical support.
Support for security features including Kerberos and SSL
Supports reliability features including application failover and Oracle RAC
Support for key Oracle features including schemas, REF CURSORs, and packages
Extensive Oracle data type support including BLOB, BLOB, BINARY, and XML
Provides interoperable platform for future DataDirect ADO.NET Entity Framework providers

For more information or to download the Beta check out

http://www.datadirect.com/products/net/beta/index.ssp

-Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability

Database Diagramming Survey

2009-04-21T18:49:00Z

The Data Programmability Tools team is currently running a survey with the goal of prioritizing ‘value add’ features for a database designer. If you’re interested in helping shape the future of MS database design tools, please take ten minutes and fill out the survey at the following link. We’d appreciate your input!

https://MSCUILLUME.smdisp.net/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=DBDiagramming&LoginId=

Thanks ,Tim Laverty

Microsoft PM, Data Programmability Tools

Announcing Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver 2.0

2009-04-01T08:21:00Z

We are excited to announce the newest release of the Microsoft SQL Server JDBC Driver! This version of the JDBC driver provides support for the JDBC 4.0 API, including new national character set conversion methods, new metadata methods, and new data types like SQLXML, as well as a host of performance improvements and bug fixes. The latest version also enhances the tracing operation by logging the entry and exit points of public methods and by providing better distinction between the trace levels. Please feel free to download a copy and see for yourself!

- JDBC Team

PDC 2008 - Los Angeles, CA - Oct. 27-30

2008-09-13T00:13:21Z

Microsoft's premier developer event, the Professional Developer Conference, is almost here. PDC 2008 will feature more than 160 sessions covering a wide range of topics including a number of great sessions from the Data Programmability Team, including the ADO.NET Entity Framework, ADO.NET Data Services and Project "Velocity".

Developing Applications Using Data Services

Presenter: Mike Flasko

In the near future, applications will be developed using a combination of custom application code and online building block services, including data-centric services. In this session we discuss advancements in the Microsoft development platform and online service interfaces to enable seamless interaction with data services both on-premises (e.g., ADO.NET Data Services Framework over on-premises SQL Server) and in the cloud (e.g., SQL Server Data Services). Learn how you can leverage existing know-how related to LINQ (Language Integrated Query), data access APIs, data-binding, and more when building applications using online data.

Offline-Enabled Data Services and Desktop Applications

Presenter: Pablo Castro

The ADO.NET Data Services Framework (a.k.a. Project "Astoria") introduced a way of creating and consuming flexible, data-centric REST services. By combining data services with the Microsoft Sync Framework, learn how to create offline-capable applications that have a local replica of their data, how to synchronize that replica with an online data service when a network connection becomes available, and how replicas can be used with the ADO.NET Entity Framework. Also, hear us talk about our plans, see the tools that help client- and server-side setup, and discuss the runtime components and APIs.

Entity Framework Futures

Presenter: Tim Mallalieu

The next version of the Entity Framework adds scenarios in the areas of model driven development, domain driven development, simplicity, and integration. See a preview of production and prototype code for the next version of the Entity Framework as well as a candid discussion with members of the development team.

Project "Velocity": A First Look

Presenter: Murali Krishnaprasad

It is predicted that all large applications will use a distributed data cache as the initial tier for all data access. This session presents an overview of "Velocity," Microsoft's distributed in-memory cache, and shows how it works with IIS, ASP.NET, ADO.NET and SQL Server Data Services.

See you there!!

Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability

Announcing Entity Framework & ADO.NET Data Services RTM!

2008-08-11T19:11:00Z

Announcing Entity Framework & ADO.NET Data Services RTM!

We are excited to announce the RTM of the Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, including the RTM of the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services, which raise the level of abstraction for database programming and supply both a new model-based paradigm and a rich, standards-based framework for creating data-oriented Web services. With this service pack, Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 also support SQL Server 2008, making the Microsoft platform the most comprehensive environment for database application development.

“The ASP.NET AJAX improvements and new capabilities like ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services meant we didn’t have to worry about any of the underlying plumbing and could simply focus on building a highly responsive and interactive experience for users,” says Galen Murdock, President and CEO at Veracity Solutions. (Link to Official Press Release)

For more information or to download check out http://msdn.microsoft.com/data

Elisa Flasko
Program Manager, Data Programmability

XML Technology and Tools Survey

2008-07-02T00:37:00Z

The Data Programmability XML Tools team is conducting a survey focused on XML technology and tools usage over the coming weeks. The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and we’d appreciate it if you would take the time to respond to it. We plan to use the survey results to help drive prioritization of features over the coming releases of Visual Studio and SQL Server.

The survey can be found here: https://mscuillume.smdisp.net/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=XMLTools

Thanks,
Tim Laverty
PM, XML Tools

Announcing Project Codename "Velocity"

2008-06-03T06:53:00Z

The advances in processors, memory, storage, and connectivity have paved the way for next-generation applications that are data-driven, whose data could reside anywhere (i.e. on the desktops, mobile devices, servers, and in the cloud) and that require access from anywhere (i.e. local, remote, over the network, from mobile devices, in connected and disconnected mode). This trend has led to the development of distributed, multi-tiered, and composite application architectures for the web and for the enterprise. A typical enterprise application accesses data from multiple data sources, integrates that data, re-shapes (or transforms) that data into a form most suitable for the application (typically into object form like C# or Java object), and writes application logic. The same is true of web applications – consider social networking apps or mashups – they access data from multiple web sources, over the internet, aggregate it, execute application logic, and generate pages for web interaction. As these styles of multi-tiered web and enterprise application are becoming main stream, the demand for application performance and scale is increasing. End users become less tolerant and more frustrated when a web application cannot respond in milliseconds; web applications that cannot scale, as the number of concurrent accesses increase, lose traffic and thereby business. Fundamentally, we have all begun to expect high performance and scale from every application. And let’s not forget application availability. For similar reasons to those I describe above, an application cannot be down. We cannot imagine the MSN portal or the Amazon web site, or the corporate SAP financial application being down when we need it. We expect to access our personal information on MSN at any time; consumers do business with Amazon at any time and from anywhere. Fundamentally, applications need to be available all the time to support access at any time, and from anywhere. Another major expectation, especially from application developers and from application hosters is that of scalable and available applications at a low cost. A decade ago, only mission-critical businesses could afford to invest in large and expensive infrastructure (both hardware and software) to support scale and availability of their applications. But, now with web hosting, everyone expects and demands high scale and availability at low cost. Extending this even further, not only developers want cheap scalable and available applications, they want the ability to develop (and deploy) such applications very rapidly.

To cope with competitive pressure, both from an innovation and a deployment perspective, rapid development and deployment of these applications is critical for application vendors. In turn, application developers are looking for application infrastructure that enables them to build highly performant, scalable, and available applications using commodity hardware and software, at a rapid pace. Traditional application platforms like the .NET and Java platforms, which are known for rapid multi-tier application development and deployment, are required to provide the scalability and availability infrastructure.

Distributed cache is becoming the key application platform component for providing scalability and high availability. In-memory caching has been traditionally used primarily for meeting the high performance requirements of applications. By fusing caches on multiple nodes into a single unified cache however, the distributed caches offer not only high performance, but also scale. By maintaining copies of data on multiple cache nodes (in a mutually consistent manner), the distributed cache can also offer high availability to applications. Distributed caches are especially ideal for applications with the following characteristics:

There is a considerable number of data requests that are mostly read (e.g. product catalogs)
- Large concurrent access to such data can be provided by replicating the catalog data on multiple cache nodes. Since updates are infrequent to such data, maintaining consistency (synchronously or asynchronously) is not very expensive
Applications that can tolerate some staleness of data
- Such applications can provide better performance and scale by not requiring immediate updates ore refreshing of caches
Applications that can work with highly partitioned data (e.g. session data, shopping cart)
- High scale and performance can be supported by partitioning and distributing data across multiple cache nodes, and thereby distributing data processing across the cache nodes
Applications that can work well with eventual consistency
- Consider a flight inventory application, which must satisfy a large number of concurrent read/writes to the inventory of seats. To support large scale, the distributed cache may replicate the inventory value on multiple nodes; however, the inventory values on different nodes have to be made consistent in some fashion. Requiring immediate (also known as strong) consistency will require updates to be synchronously propagated to all the copies. Such action would impact the overall performance and scale of the application. However, instead of immediately making the copies consistent, allowing them to eventually (in an asynchronous manner) become consistent will provide low latency, high performance access to inventory.

As distributed caches become more widely deployed, I believe over the next few years, distributed cache will be used as the first tier of all data access. Multi-tier application architecture will include the cache tier as a data access tier between the application server tier and the backend data tier.

Today, Microsoft is announcing the first CTP of a distributed caching product to provide the .NET application platform support for developing highly performant, scalable, and highly available applications. The project code named “Velocity” is a distributed cache that allows any type of data (CLR object, XML document, or binary data) to be cached. “Velocity” fuses large numbers of cache nodes in a cluster into a single unified cache and provides transparent access to cache items from any client connected to the cluster. The Data Platform Developer Center at http://msdn.microsoft.com/data and the Velocity Team Blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/velocity provides additional information about project code named “Velocity” as well as links to download our first CTP.

Distributed caches are not new – during the last couple of years several caching products have emerged to address the performance and scalability needs of applications. Most of these products are point products, primarily supporting key-based access. Other than memcached, which is an open source technology, most others target enterprises and enterprise workloads and scale. I think the web workloads require considerably large scale, with 1000s of cache nodes in a cluster. The web scale distributed caches not only require mechanisms that can scale and provide availability in very large clusters, they must be easy to manage or self-managed. In the Future, “Velocity” envisions being an integral part of the .NET application stack targeting both enterprise and web workloads (and scale). As applications start using the caches for data access, I also believe, they will demand richer data services like query, transactions, analytics, synchronization etc. For example, we believe .NET applications will require LINQ queries on the distributed cache, the same way they query the backend SQL Server database. We envision “Velocity” becoming such a comprehensive distributed caching platform. The performance, scale, and availability functionality of “Velocity” along with its rich data services will allow for rich web and enterprise applications development and deployment.

Anil Nori
Microsoft Distinguished Engineer

Software Development Engineer in Test opening in Data Programmability

2008-05-24T03:55:00Z

The SQL Server JDBC team is running at full speed working on the next JDBC driver for SQL Server. We are looking for people to share in our excitement about the future of data access for SQL Server and to manage the quality of our next deliverables.

Are you passionate about working with data, the powerful query capabilities of T-SQL, the power of Object Oriented programming languages like Java, C#, C++? Are you interested in designing the next set of API’s for data and want to work for a team that’s focused on shipping technologies and having fun?

We are interested in hearing from you. Drop us a line through the team blog or directly to me and we’ll get back to you.

Uwa Agbonile

SQL Server JDBC/SNAC/PHP Teams

Uwa.Agbonile@microsoft.com

Interested in working on the ADO.NET Data Services Framework (aka "Astoria") or XML?

2008-05-20T19:13:00Z

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

http://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 (aconrad@microsoft.com) email.

For more details on each of the open positions, please see:

ADO.NET Data Services PM

XML PM

ADO.NET Data Services SDE

XML SDE

ADO.NET Data Services SDE/T

XML SDE/T

We look forward to talking with you...

Thanks,

Mike Flasko : ADO.NET Data Services ("Astoria"), Program Manager

Entity Framework & Data Services Available in VS2008 SP1 Beta

2008-05-12T07:30:00Z

We are very excited about .NET 3.5 SP1 and Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and what this update means for developers who use ADO.NET for data development. This beta marks the entry of the ADO.NET Entity Framework and ADO.NET Data Services (aka project Astoria) as part of the overall .NET/Visual Studio beta install. This public release is also the final beta before the RTM of these two technologies. In addition, we have a revision of LINQ to SQL that introduces the new date time functions for SQL Server 2008.

In the space of a few short months developers have been able to experience a wave of innovation in the .NET data programming space. We began with the introduction of LINQ in .NET Framework 3.5 for providing a compile time query experience over in-memory objects, XML and relational data, and now we’re adding the Entity Framework runtime and graphical entity designer into the mix. The Entity Framework extends the reach of ADO.NET, providing a new data model that will be the foundation for a range of data services moving forward. We’ve also enhanced the common ADO.NET provider model enabling a LINQ programming experience against 3^rd party databases. The Entity Framework designer in Visual Studio works with 3^rd party databases as well and enables developers to visualize the data model being used by the application.

Over the last year or so we’ve seen a growing trend in the way people build services. They tend to either be operation-centric with a focus on actions occurring on either side or they are resource-centric, where the focus is on working with the data or resource on either side. For operation-centric services the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow (WF) teams have done a bunch of work in .NET 3.5 to make it easier to build these action oriented service interfaces as a workflow. On the data-centric side, the Data Programmability team has been working with the WCF team to deliver ADO.NET Data Services. This is one of the most exciting new additions to the platform in some time, providing the foundation for building the next generation of data-driven applications and services today. These data services build on the WCF classes to provide an end-to-end experience for building data-centric REST based services in .NET. They have a REST based query model, a means of exchanging metadata (in terms of the Entity Data Model) and client and mid-tier API’s that let people build rich data services and clients in a way that is easier than ever before. Developers can start with the Entity Framework and expose relational data via the Data Services Framework, they can expose non-relational data using a custom provider, or they can use some of the existing services that already expose these protocols.

· Live App Storage

· Live Spaces Photos

In summary, it is an exciting time to be working with data on the .NET platform. The team is looking forward to your feedback. We invite you all to download this beta and start using these technologies today.

Sam Druker

General Manager, Data Programmability