ADO.NET Data Services Feeds Data to Web

Easier database access for Web applications is one goal of ADO.NET Data Services, a data access technology released in Aug. 2008 with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. With Data Services, developers can build server applications that make databases and other data sources accessible as feeds over the Web using Atom, a standard developed for blogging and Web content syndication that is now being used for other types of data access. Data Services could particularly benefit organizations that use client-side Web development technologies (such as Microsoft’s Silverlight) to give users more responsive Web applications. However, Data Services is still developing, and it is not suited for every data access problem.

Data Access Over the Web

The ADO.NET Data Services tools and runtime components for server applications provide read-write access to databases and other data sources using Atom. (See the illustration “Data Services Architecture and Technologies“.) Atom is a data format and protocol that enables applications to read and update collections of data, commonly called feeds, over Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), the standard Web protocol. Initially used in blogs and Web content syndication, Atom has since gained traction with online service providers such as Microsoft and Google, who use it to publish user contact lists, maps, or other data to third-party client applications. (See the sidebar “Atom: Data Access Over the Web“.)