How are Microsoft's FeedSync and Sync Framework related?
Microsoft took the wraps off earlier this week a new (presumably) Windows Live service, FeedSync. A couple of weeks ago, the company unveiled another sync-related platform, known as the Microsoft Sync Framework. Will the two ever meet?
In fact, they already have, according to a post on the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) blogs site.
The Microsoft Sync Framework -- which is designed to allow developers to add synchronization, roaming and offline access to apps, services and devices -- already includes support for FeedSync, according to the Softies. FeedSync is the technology championed by Microsoft Chief Software Architect that was formerly known as RSS Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE).
Microsoft made available the 1.0 version of the FeedSync specification, as well as a refresh of the first Community Technology Preview (CTP) build of its Sync Framework, both on December 5. Microsoft's Live Labs also quietly made available a hosted version of FeedSync as an incubated service to help developers build and test FeedSync services.
There are some potential areas of synergy that will be key as Microsoft moves forward with its strategy to make users' data available to them from any platform, be it browsers, client machines and/or mobile devices, according to a December 5 post on the new Microsoft Sync Framework blog:
"We envision several ways that FeedSync can interoperate with the Sync Framework, including:
"When you want to publish or consume the contents of your data store in the form of an RSS or Atom feed, with minimal changes to your application. This is helpful when there is an existing ecosystem of Microsoft Sync Framework endpoints which synchronize with each other and you want to bridge this ecosystem to a Web service or to another synchronization ecosystem. In this case there needs to be a mapping between the data store’s data and metadata, and a FeedSync representation of that data and metadata.
"You wish to synchronize a set of data that is entirely represented by an RSS or ATOM feed. An example of this may be if you wish to write a calendar application that stores its data in a feed format for publishing."
Microsoft is no doubt well on its way to readying new Live services that make use of FeedSync and the Sync Framework platform. The Microsoft "Humanitarian Systems Team" is listed as an early adopter of FeedSync. Have any external developers out there started doing anything with either of these platforms?