General

Q: What is the ADO.NET Data Services framework (aka project codename "Astoria")?
A: Astoria is a project in the Data Programmability team at Microsoft that explores how to provide infrastructure and tools for exposing and consuming data in the web. Astoria can create data services that are exposed in a natural way to the web, over HTTP and using URIs to refer to pieces of data; these data services can be consumed by AJAX front-ends, Silverlight-enabled web pages, desktop applications and more. The “overview” document that is available rovides a more complete introduction to Astoria.

A CTP of “Project Astoria” was released at the Mix 2007 conference and refreshed in September of 2007. These two initial CTP releases represented a proof of concept (ie. prototype) release to gain further understanding of the requirements for REST-based data services on the web. This CTP (Dec 2007) is an early look at the production version of ADO.Net Data Services (formerly known as “Project Astoria”). This version is architected from the ground up with lessons learned from and feedback received regarding the two prior proof of concept releases. This release does not represent a final feature set, but rather provides an early preview of some of the core pieces (URI format, payload formats, etc) of the system. Note: this CTP is not compatible with the prior proof on concept releases. The primary reason for incompatibility is that a lot of the changes are coming as a direct result of feedback we have received to date, and many others are a result of extending the scenarios supported by the system.

Q: What is the difference between the Astoria CTP toolkit that is available for download and the Astoria online service?
A: The Astoria toolkit consists of a set of runtime components, documentation, samples and Visual Studio integration elements that allows developers to create and consume Astoria data services in their own ASP.NET web applications. The Astoria online service is an experimental deployment of the Astoria toolkit plus added infrastructure in the Microsoft Live Labs environment that can be accessed over the internet. The online service includes a number of pre-created sample data-sets exposed as data services, and soon it will offer the option of creating custom data services to allow for further experimentation with the technology using custom schemas and custom data.  

Technology

Q: Why are you using a REST-style programming interface?
A: we wanted to expose a “pure data” service, and the resource-oriented nature of HTTP and the REST-style interfaces seemed to be appropriate.

Q: How does this impact the commitment of Microsoft to the SOAP and WS-* world?
A: Microsoft is fully committed to web services and we believe that in many scenarios the richness and expressiveness of full SOAP-based web services and WS-* -based services is key to address business needs. Support for a REST-style API for data simply broadens the reach of the platform to customers and scenarios that weren’t covered before.

Q: What is the relationship between Astoria and Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)?
A: All Astoria data services are essentially WCF services. You can see Astoria data services as a special form of WCF service that is aware of the nature of the data that is exposing.

Q: What is the relationship between Astoria and the Entity Data Model (EDM)?
A: Astoria data services uses the EDM as the model for the data exposed through its services. Having a high-level data model allows Astoria to provided added semantics to the service, such as having a clear definition of what an “entity” is for a given service or how to navigate from one entity to another associated entity.

Q: What is the relationship between Astoria and the ADO.NET Entity Framework?
A: Astoria exposes data modeled as EDM models. The ADO.NET Entity framework is the natural choice for an infrastructure that already supports the EDM and through mapping technology can present relational stores in EDM terms. The Astoria runtime that sits in the web servers and serves the requests to data services is built on top of the ADO.NET Entity Framework. Online service

Q: Are you launching a “storage as a service” product?
A: No, Astoria is focused on the programming model for data in the web, not so much on the storage aspects. Actual storage technologies and strategies depend largely on the deployment scenario (both for the online and the downloadable versions) and are outside of the scope of the Astoria project.

Q: Are you providing any guarantees of data availability for the Astoria online service CTP?
A: The Astoria online service is an early prototype version of a service that Microsoft is exploring. As a prototype, we make no guarantees of data availability or accuracy through the Astoria CTP online Service. You should not use the Astoria CTP online service in a production environment.