Microsoft Project Codename “Velocity” and Sync Framework News
Members of the SQL Server Data Programmability team were at TechEd Developers this week announcing news around the Microsoft Sync Framework and what we are calling Project “Velocity”. Velocity is a distributed in-memory application cache platform for developing scalable, high-performance applications. Velocity can be used to cache any type of data that is accessed frequently online.
Velocity is fully integrated with ASP.NET, allowing developers to cache ASP session data without accessing backend databases. This makes it easy and efficient for developers to store things like shopping cart details, wish list items or user settings associated with each customer for a particular visit.
There are a lot of other great uses for this technology;
o For example, a high-traffic online retailer could use Velocity to cache their product catalog information. Caching this information would drastically reduce the number of requests for the same data from the database. In this case, not only would Velocity provide better performance and a better user experience, but it would also reduce the load on the database backend.
o An ideal scenario for using Velocity is to cache application data across the entire web farm. Velocity allows the information cache to be scaled similarly to how website hosting scales across a large server farm or across a cluster of machines. Velocity’s information cache can be scaled as if it were a single unified entity while providing high availability to the cached data.
o Velocity also eases the development complexities that are often associated with high availability web sites by allowing any serializable CLR object to be cached and by providing access through simple cache APIs. Velocity can be configured to run as a service that can be accessed over the network or it can be run embedded within the application.
We also announced a couple of new partners for the Sync Framework, Ontela and SmugMug and that a Sync Framework CTP will soon be available for Windows Mobile. We’re excited because these partners show the traction we’ve had since we first started talking about Sync last November and how it would enable collaboration and offline scenarios for application, services and devices. Ontela uses the Sync Framework to provide technology infrastructure to wireless carriers that allows consumers to unlock the photos in their camera phones. SmugMug developed a solution that allows users to ad or modify a photo in one location, for example a desktop, and then automatically add or modify in multiple locations and applications, for example online photo albums, laptops and handhelds.
TechEd Developers is going to be a great experience! Stay tuned for more news at TechEd IT Professionals next week.
