Project Codename: Astoria,3
Recent update: 2008-3-21

Astoria is out for VS 2008 Beta 2 (September 2007 CTP)!! YAY!

1282 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-3-7
Ok, so perhaps I'm a little more excited than I should be... but this basically untied my twiddling thumbs for a fairly important project that I'm working on, so I finally get to move forward on it.One question I do have is this - why is it that we cannot create an IIS-hosted Astoria project? ...

LinqToWebData?

1454 byte By tseemann at 2008-3-6
Are there any plans to include LINQ support for WebData?i.e. Code Snippet NorthwindWebDataContext ctx = new NorthwindWebDataContext(...); var q = from c in ctx.Customer where c.City == "London" select c; instead of Code Snippet WebDataContext ctx = new WebDataContext(...); var ...

Astoria Data Services

122 byte By Shakky at 2008-3-5
Hi, Whether it is possible to create a data service with multiple databases and datasources? Shaki

what''s the difference between web data services vs web services

65 byte By Anonymous at 2008-3-3
what's the difference between web data services vs web services

THIS IS AWESOME!!!

1922 byte By MichaelD! at 2008-3-1
WOW!!! Yet once again another fantastic idea from the Microsoft camp!This is an incredibly amazing concept! I was actually just thinking the other day (based on my personal project that I'm working on) that it would be awesome to have the ability to dynamically create data models using the ...

ADO.NET Entity Data Model template not visible

478 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-28
Well, this was a short-lived happy day. I downloaded the September Astoria bits and I installed them and know they're working because I see "Web Data Service" as a new option when I right-click my project. When I attempt to follow the Astoria "hello world" tutorial, I see ...

Astoria is out for VS 2008 Beta 2 (September 2007 CTP)!! YAY!

1282 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-27
Ok, so perhaps I'm a little more excited than I should be... but this basically untied my twiddling thumbs for a fairly important project that I'm working on, so I finally get to move forward on it.One question I do have is this - why is it that we cannot create an IIS-hosted Astoria project? ...

Question about Web3S

1155 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-26
I think I "get" the point of Web3S, it's basically a couple of guidelines for how you should interact in a RESTful, POXy manner... but what I don't get is why it ADDS complexity to something that most people tout for its ease of use and simplicity. For example, if I make a pure ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-25
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-24
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

What other products are considering using Astoria?

871 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-23
Hi, I'm interested to know whether there has been any interest from other product groups in leveraging Astoria for their own needs. There must be a multitude of products within Microsoft that have an interest in making data available as a data service. A quick brainstorm: The Office Business ...

Great to see Web3S support

507 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-22
Hey guys, I read on your blog today about your intended support for Web3S as a payload format. Great news - its fantastic to see disparate product groups within MSFT combining like that. More of the same please - it would be great to see Astoria+Web3S become a "default" choice within ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-22
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Great to see Web3S support

507 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-21
Hey guys, I read on your blog today about your intended support for Web3S as a payload format. Great news - its fantastic to see disparate product groups within MSFT combining like that. More of the same please - it would be great to see Astoria+Web3S become a "default" choice within ...

What other products are considering using Astoria?

871 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-20
Hi, I'm interested to know whether there has been any interest from other product groups in leveraging Astoria for their own needs. There must be a multitude of products within Microsoft that have an interest in making data available as a data service. A quick brainstorm: The Office Business ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-19
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-18
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Making a call to the online service form a dektop application (.net 2.0)

1380 byte By markovuksanovic at 2008-2-17
I have tried using the following code to add a new entry to the datastore WebRequest req = null; HttpWebResponse res = null; // Initialise the web request // Get Bytes for auth string {user}:{password} ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding(); Byte[] userPassBytes = ...

Where to find it ?

101 byte By OmarAbid at 2008-2-16
Hi, Interested in this Astoria where can I find more information on it ? Thanks

JavaScript library to access REST data services?

256 byte By viswaug at 2008-2-15
Hi, Is there a JavaScript out there that can be used to access the REST based Astoria data services. In other words, How can i download the data in JSON format from a Astoria REST data service from javascript? Thank You, Vish

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-15
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-15
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

JavaScript library to access REST data services?

256 byte By viswaug at 2008-2-15
Hi, Is there a JavaScript out there that can be used to access the REST based Astoria data services. In other words, How can i download the data in JSON format from a Astoria REST data service from javascript? Thank You, Vish

ADO.NET EDM Wizard

343 byte By LThomas999 at 2008-2-15
I have installed ORCAS beta 2 and am wokring through the creating a local data service using Visual Studio. I saw the previous message regarding ADO.Net EDM wizard not visible. I am not seeing the ADO.Net at all. Is there something else we should use to connect to a database in this example for ...

ADO.NET EDM Wizard

343 byte By LThomas999 at 2008-2-14
I have installed ORCAS beta 2 and am wokring through the creating a local data service using Visual Studio. I saw the previous message regarding ADO.Net EDM wizard not visible. I am not seeing the ADO.Net at all. Is there something else we should use to connect to a database in this example for ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-14
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Alternative uses of Astoria

2037 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-13
As you may know from my interactions on here and elsewhere I'm very curious about Astoria. I primarily work on BI projects and, even more specifically, I use SQL Server Integration Services (that's how i got my MVP thingummy) for data integration. For those that don't know, SSIS is used to ...

Making a call to the online service form a dektop application (.net 2.0)

1380 byte By markovuksanovic at 2008-2-13
I have tried using the following code to add a new entry to the datastore WebRequest req = null; HttpWebResponse res = null; // Initialise the web request // Get Bytes for auth string {user}:{password} ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding(); Byte[] userPassBytes = ...

Making a call to the online service form a dektop application (.net 2.0)

1380 byte By markovuksanovic at 2008-2-12
I have tried using the following code to add a new entry to the datastore WebRequest req = null; HttpWebResponse res = null; // Initialise the web request // Get Bytes for auth string {user}:{password} ASCIIEncoding encoding = new ASCIIEncoding(); Byte[] userPassBytes = ...

Entity Data Model Wizard template not visible in Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2

446 byte By BhushanN at 2008-2-11
I have installed Visual Studio "Orcas" Beta 2 (Standard edition) along with the "Astoria" CTP & trying to add a local data service. The "Add New Item link" in Visual Studio does not contain a template for the Entity Data Model Wizard. This option is missing.Can ...

query customizations in Astoria?

425 byte By viswaug at 2008-2-10
Hi, I am trying to think of ways in which Astoria can be used to query spatial databases. Can Astoria URL query contain parameters that can be parsed into custom objects by user functions that can then be used to query a spatial database? I.E. for example, the URL contains a series of X Ys ...

What kind of security options are available in Astoria?

224 byte By viswaug at 2008-2-10
Hi all, What kind of security options are available to restrict data access in Astoria? Can Astoria be used for updating data or is it only for accessing data? Thank You, Vish

More questions from me...

1985 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-8
A few brainstormed questions after using Astoria for a while. The username/password for the service demo'd below is quoteit/quoteit The following 2 URIs return the same thing: ...

Why can I delete entities that have associated entities?

831 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-8
Hi, Ive been playing around with my experimental data service at https://astoria.sandbox.live.com/users/quotemehappy/quotemehappy.rse username=quoteit password=quoteit The service is very basic. Its a list of Persons and a list of Quotes for each of those Persons. What bothers me is that I ...

ClientEDMgen.exe Fails with Exception

306 byte By DonBaechtel at 2008-2-7
When I try to run Astoria ClientEDMgen.exe with the path to my hosted data store, the only response I get is: "Application Failed to initialize properly (0xC0000135)". What is the problem? Why does this utility not run without error? How do I run it? ...

Is Astoria still an incubation technology?

1588 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-7
A couple of weeks ago I had an interesting conversation with the solution architect (who happens to work for Microsoft Consulting Services by the way) on my current project trying to persuade him that Astoria was something we should be looking at heavily for our data integration needs. His ...

Can''t Create Association in Hosted Store.

1096 byte By DonBaechtel at 2008-2-7
I am trying to use your Astoria Data Store editor to create my data store online. I can not create a New Association. My store is https://astoria.sandbox.live.com/users/Store1/Store1.rse I have 2 Entities: Schools and Teachers. I am trying to Associate Teachers to Schools using the ...

When will the beta 2 be published ?

534 byte By Nicolasbolbol at 2008-2-7
Hello,I'm very enthusiast with Astoria because it's exactly what I will need for a new project ... the only problem is that that Astoria is in beta 1 ... when will the beta 2 be released ? (approximately) ?Will the current API be keeped or the current API can change quite completely ? I plan ...

Is Astoria the hotmail/gmail/flickr/etc of databases?

410 byte By UnderTheGun at 2008-2-6
Hi guys,I can see at the moment we are getting 100MB of free space to "play" with Astoria while its in testing... Is this the kind of thing we can expect when the project is finished? Will Astoria become the gmail/hotmail/etc of databases and offer free accounts and space to all? I ...

Questions about hosted services

1089 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-6
Hi, Just a few Qs about the hosted services: How will we know how big the database is? i.e. How will we know when we're coming close to exceeding 100MB? Will we have the capability to performance tune the underlying database? At the very least I'd like to be able to create covering ...

Hosted data services

1910 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-5
Hi all, I'm really excited about the weekend announcement of hosted data services - who says MSFT don't innovate? I've set up a demo service here: https://astoria.sandbox.live.com/users/quotemehappy/quotemehappy.rse username: quoteit password: tietouq and I've been using ...

Authentication with new data service in sandbox

473 byte By Terrence at 2008-2-5
How can I pass in my username and password using the new sandbox tool? I tried adding them to the uri $username=xxx&$password=xxx but this does not work. Pablo this stuff looks really great, I can't wait to put it through a workout. Terrence ...

Can Astoria return data in JSON format?

254 byte By viswaug at 2008-2-4
<font face="Times New Roman" size=2>By default, the requested is returned in XML. Is it possible to have Astoria return the data in a JSON format?</font> <font face="Times New Roman"></font> <font face="Times New Roman">Vish</font>

Astoria and Silverlight

494 byte By [Philip] at 2008-2-4
Hello thereI am considering posibility of using Astoria services with my Silverlight application. I am interested in that new 100 meg offer that's out there working together with the silverlight streaming service launched by Microsoft earlier. My question is whether I can use Astoria through ...

Create your own hosted Astoria data service!

915 byte By PabloCastro-MSFT at 2008-2-4
If you think it would be interesting to be able to define the schema of a data service and have it be created "in the cloud" and an URI handed back to you, check this out: http://blogs.msdn.com/astoriateam/archive/2007/08/03/create-your-own-hosted-astoria-data-service.aspx Mike just ...

LinqToWebData?

1471 byte By tseemann at 2008-2-4
Are there any plans to include LINQ support for WebData? i.e. Code Snippet NorthwindWebDataContext ctx = new NorthwindWebDataContext(...); var q = from c in ctx.Customer where c.City == "London" select c; instead of Code Snippet WebDataContext ctx = new ...

Astoria on Orcas Beta 2

596 byte By KevinHoffman at 2008-2-3
Given that Astoria is not coupled directly with Orcas - when can I get an install of Astoria for the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio Orcas ... or, better yet, can I just use the Beta 1 install on the new release? Bottom line is that Astoria represents 90% of my interest in Orcas right now, ...

Help please: How do I use the WebDataQuery<T>.Count<T> funcntion?

1317 byte By JamieThomson at 2008-2-3
Hi all, I'm a .Net noob so bear with me here OK. This is how I learn I have used WebDataQuery<T> to return some data from an Astoria service. The data has been returned in XML format. Now, what exactly can I use the Count<T> method for? I know what the XML contains, its ...

Astoria on Visual Web Developer Express 2008 Beta 2

194 byte By mrtrombone at 2008-2-2
Hello Is Astoria now fully (easily) supported in the latest Express Beta editions that were released in the last couple of days or should I download the standard version of Orcas? Thanks

Astoria RDF support

9369 byte By AndrewHoughton at 2008-2-2
Pablo's MIX 2007 presentation indicated that Astoria was looking at supporting RDF and he was looking for some feedback on the current RDF implementation. I was glad to see that the Astoria team was thinking about RDF since more of my projects involve using RDF with our regional offices in ...