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Jasper and Astoria, projects to keep an eye on

Microsoft has just announced two new projects at MIX '07: Jasper and Astoria (codenames). Both tools are available for download as CTPs (Community Technology Previews, aka alphas).

Project Jasper is geared towards iterative and agile development. You can start interacting with the data in your database without having to create mapping files or define classes. You can build user interfaces by naming controls according to your model without worrying about binding code. Project Jasper is also extensible, allowing you to provide your own business logic and class model. Since Project Jasper is built on top of the ADO.NET Entity Framework, it supports rich queries and complex mapping.

Jasper looks similar to Ruby on Rails, Castle and SubSonic...
Note that Jasper requires languages that support late-binding like VB.NET and IronPython. Looks like C# is out of the game...
You can learn more about Jasper at several places:

The goal of Microsoft Codename Astoria is to enable applications to expose data as a data service that can be consumed by web clients within a corporate network and across the internet. The data service is reachable over regular HTTP requests, and standard HTTP verbs such as GET, POST, PUT and DELETE are used to perform operations against the service. The payload format for the service is controllable by the application, but all options are simple, open formats such as plan XML and JSON. Web-friendly technologies make Astoria an ideal data back-end for AJAX-style applications, and other applications that need to operate against data that is across the web.

Astoria follows another trend of our industry: REST APIs.
You can learn more about Astoria at several places:

With all the announcements and resources about Jasper and Astoria, it looks like Microsoft wants to push them hard. A lot to investigate anyway!

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