Microsoft sync Framework 1.0 RTM released

Microsoft sync framework is a fully functional synchronization platform that implements applications.Program, Service and device collaboration and offline access. It provides some technologies and tools that support roaming, sharing, and obtaining data offline. By using the sync framework, developers can build a synchronization ecosystem to integrate any application with any data in any storage using any protocol on any network.

Sync framework includes the following technologies. The first three technologies can be installed with SQL Server 2008:

• Sync services for ADO. Net, which can be used in offline and collaborative solutions to synchronize databases.
• The core component of the sync framework, which can be used by sync services for ADO. Net to synchronize databases. It can also be used to create synchronization providers for other types of data storage.
• Sync services for feedsync can be used to synchronize RSS and atom sources with data stored locally.
• Sync services for file systems can be used to synchronize files and folders in the file system.
• Metadata storage service, which can be used to store synchronization metadata in SQL Server compact.

Sync services for ADO. Net supports synchronization between databases. It provides an intuitive and flexible API that can be used to build applications for offline and collaborative application solutions. Sync services for ADO.. Net supports synchronization between two peers (such as SQL Server databases), or between SQL Server compact client databases and ADO.. Net Provider supports synchronization between any Server databases. This API allows you to use all or some of the provided components, depending on the application architecture and requirements.

Microsoft provides several technologies designed specifically for applications that execute synchronization. Therefore, it is very useful to compare sync services for ADO. Net with other technologies used in offline and collaborative application solutions.

Offline Synchronization

The most important offline Microsoft synchronization technology is as follows:

• Remote Data Access (RDA ). This technology is used to synchronize the SQL Server compact database with other SQL Server databases. For more information, see SQL Server compact books online.
• Merge and copy. This technology is used to synchronize different versions of SQL Server (including SQL Server compact ).

Collaborative Synchronization

In terms of cooperative synchronization, the most important technology to be compared is peer-to-peer transaction replication, which is used to synchronize two or more SQL Server Enterprise databases. Sync services for ADO. net and transaction replication support peer-to-peer synchronization: Transaction replication is best suited to maintain high availability and expand read activity to multiple servers; and sync services for ADO.. NET is the most suitable for collaborative processing of the same data.

Sync services for ADO. NET provides flexible programming models (such as offline datasets) and richer synchronization feature sets (such as functions in replication ). Sync services for ADO. NET is better than RDA. Replication is suitable for database administrators and is mainly used to synchronize SQL Server databases. Replication provides configuration data for important functions through the wizard, stored procedures, and their own APIs. Sync services for ADO. NET is suitable for developers. It supports heterogeneous databases and can be synchronized through services (such as Windows Communication Foundation (WCF. If the application needs to be synchronized with a non-SQL Server database, or the application must use a separate component to support synchronization through different transmission or services, use sync services for ADO. net.

For some applications, it is easy to determine the technology to be used: If you must synchronize data sources other than the SQL Server database, you should use sync services for ADO. net. If you are the database administrator who wants to configure synchronization and do not want to perform a lot of programming work, replication may be a better choice.

Microsoft Sync service 1.0