What's New in This Release (Sync Services)
Microsoft Sync Services for ADO.NET 2.0 includes the following new features and capabilities:
The ability to perform peer-to-peer synchronization.
The focus with this part of the API is collaborative applications. For example, in an application that allows users to share project notes, project team members often require a local copy of data that they can work with. When they have made changes, they can synchronize with another team member to exchange changes. For more information, see Collaboration Scenarios (Sync Services).
Sync Services is now based on Microsoft Sync Framework.
Sync Services now requires Microsoft.Synchronization.dll. If you installed Sync Services by using SyncSetup.exe, this DLL is already installed. For more information about Sync Framework, see this Microsoft Web site. For more information about the public types and members in Microsoft.Synchronization.dll, see the Sync Framework core documentation. To download this documentation, go to this Microsoft Web site.
Synchronization Services for ADO.NET 1.0 Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Sync Services for ADO.NET 2.0 and include the following new features and capabilities:
The ability to synchronize with devices.
Sync Services 1.0 enables synchronization between a server database and a SQL Server Compact 3.5 database on the desktop. In Sync Services 1.0 SP1, you can also synchronize between a server database and a SQL Server Compact 3.5 database on a device. For more information, see How to: Configure Synchronization for a Device.
Support for SQL Server change tracking.
If you are using SQL Server 2008, we recommend that you use the SQL Server change tracking feature. This feature addresses many of the issues of custom-tracking systems and provides a straightforward way to track changes. SQL Server change tracking is supported if you create synchronization commands manually or if you use the synchronization adapter builder. For more information, see How to: Use SQL Server Change Tracking and Getting Started: Client and Server Synchronization.
Change tracking is also supported by the Local Database Cache in Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Developers can now specify that the Configure Data Synchronization wizard should enable SQL Server change tracking on the server and generate the commands necessary to select and apply changes to the server database. Unlike custom change tracking systems, SQL Server change tracking does not require any schema changes in the server database. For more information, see the Visual Studio 2008 documentation.
Support for the new data types in SQL Server 2008.
For more information, see Data Type Mapping and Considerations (Sync Services).
The ability to trace the synchronization process.
In distributed applications, tracing can be crucial because it enables you to troubleshoot issues that might otherwise be difficult to identify. Sync Services includes tracing for the client and server synchronization providers. For more information, see How to: Trace the Synchronization Process.