Pablo Castro: Astoria Data Services

Posted By: Jeff Sandquist | May 7th, 2007 @ 9:32 AM

Meet Pablo Castro one of the folks behind Astoria. Astoria exposes "data services" that enable applications to access and manipulate data over regular HTTP connections, using URIs to identify pieces of information within the data service, and simple payload formats such as XML and JSON to represent the data exchanged between the client and the server.

In this interview Pablo goes deep whiteboarding out Astoria. If you want to go even further on Astoria check out Pablo's session from Mix.

Tags: ADO.NET, Astoria

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Cyonix
Me

So this seems to be a mix between web services and RSS?

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

Very cool. A lot like DNS (and we know that is good model) for data. I land on mostly on the object side of things, so if .net lib takes care of all the uri goo for me, this we be fantastically great. Love the hosting idea. Been a big supporting of ms doing that. Hope they stay and expand that idea. Office live model sounds natural for this. Free for N MB, $x for 500MB, etc. Current Office live packages should include this ability as value add to respective packages. Nice^2.

JoshRoss
JoshRoss

This would be cool a few years ago. I feel like Goldilocks after eating really bad porridge and trying-out a couple of f-up beds. The first bed was made out of a framework that wasn't very extensible. The second bed was made out of a framework that was too extensible. Meanwhile, the bears are in the back yard, smoking, dancing, and speaking in strange tongues. Little did I know, the bears purchased the house from the Winchester's. Most of the doors are fake and the stairs lead to nowhere.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

JoshRoss wrote:

This would be cool a few years ago. I feel like Goldilocks after eating really bad porridge and trying-out a couple of f-up beds. The first bed was made out of a framework that wasn't very extensible. The second bed was made out of a framework that was too extensible. Meanwhile, the bears are in the back yard, smoking, dancing, and speaking in strange tongues. Little did I know, the bears purchased the house from the Winchester's. Most of the doors are fake and the stairs lead to nowhere.

huh? I lovz me a smoking and dancing bear as much as the next guy, but what the hell does this mean?

JoshRoss
JoshRoss

There are many half-(I need to watch my language) frameworks, which do the same thing in a different way. Why even bother inventing a new one, unless it does something amazing? Here are some requirements for an amazing framework: Secure, Consistent, Reliable, Extensible, and Fast.

In addition, it needs end-to-end debugging, intellisense, and most importantly, a design that takes in account its own obsolescence.

staceyw
Before C# there was darkness...

JoshRoss wrote:

There are many half-(I need to watch my language) frameworks, which do the same thing in a different way. Why even bother inventing a new one, unless it does something amazing? Here are some requirements for an amazing framework: Secure, Consistent, Reliable, Extensible, and Fast.

In addition, it needs end-to-end debugging and intellisense.

Isn't that what this is? Have not used this product yet, but as a client library, you get the VS intellisense automatically. And you get the end-to-end debugging already built into VS platform. You could set break points in the client, in the middle tier and even in the DB managed procs if you need.

JoshRoss
JoshRoss

In full disclosure, I have not used it either. However, I have used a few other middle-tier frameworks. It is difficult to get this right. From the video, it looked like a pet project. And Pet projects do not seem to stick around for too long.

Gberg

Very cool. I always really enjoy Pablo and the things he demos. His enthusiasm is infectious. This looks great, but I'd much rather have him pushing Entity Framework out the door than focusing on the next thing.

Arturo

I have to pause and ask. Why do I need this? It seems like technology in search of a solution. I have some security concerns as well with Astoria.