Announcing Sync Framework 4.0 CTP

Back in Mix 10 we showed an application built with the intention of extending the Sync Framework to Silverlight platform. This enabled rich apps built on Silverlight for desktop and Windows Phone 7 to participate in a sync topology. At that point we only showed an application built on our early thinking. Since then we have been off trying to package it for public consumption. I am very glad to announce the public availability of the Sync Framework 4.0 CTP which enables users to now build similar applications. With this release we are announcing the Asymmetric Sync toplogy that enables offline application development on any client platform that has capability of persisting data. Up until Sync Fx 2.1 users had to have Windows to be able to use the Sync framework. One of the most common feature requests were to ship the framework for windows devices (CE, embedded and the WM 6.X) platform. With the advent of Windows Phone 7 we took a long hard look at the device/non windows platform support and the asymmetric sync was one such solution we decided to pursue. Asymmetric sync standardizes on a protocol instead of a sync components on clients and moved ALL sync framework components to the server side. This enabled client platforms such as Silverlight (desktop and Windows Phone 7), HTML5, iPhone, Android, RIM and others have the ability to build offline apps synchronizing with a standard sync service.

Sync Framework 4.0 (yes we skipped 3.0!) CTP is not available. Please visit https://blogs.msdn.com/b/sync/archive/2010/10/28/announcing-sync-framework-4-0-october-2010-ctp.aspx for more information and the scenarios it enables. We are very excitied with this release as this opens the Sync framework to a completely new set of developers and we cant wait to see the interesting scenarios these developers will come up with.

I am presenting at Sql PASS 2010 tomorrow on Sync Framework 4.0. If you are attending Sql PASS then try to attend this session. The session should be available for on demand viewing later and I will update with a direct link to the presentation.