Microsoft's New Sync Framework Piling Up

Data can be kept current regardless of file format, network configuration

By David Worthington

November 7, 2007 —

Applications, devices and services are increasingly interconnected. Consequently, data now exists in more places than ever before. The implications are clear: Data stored on one device has to be as accurate and up to date as it is on another.

Microsoft is providing a framework for developers to create solutions that enable peer-to-peer (P2P) collaboration and online/offline synchronization scenarios. The framework is distributed, allowing any end point to keep data synchronized, while being agnostic to the underlying data format, data type or network configuration.

Microsoft released a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Microsoft Sync Framework on Monday and is targeting its release for Q2 2008 at the same time that it ships SQL Server 2008, said Francois Ajenstat, director of product management for SQL Server.

Anthony Carrabino, senior product manager for SQL Server, explained that the framework, which is a standalone download, provides developers with a set of managed and unmanaged components to compile into their applications. .NET applications that use the components do not require Visual Studio 2008, but unmanaged code such as C++ has dependencies on the IDE’s underlying libraries.

The Sync Framework builds on the offline data caching capabilities of ADO.NET and SQL Server Compact Edition. It adds bidirectionality, but it does not require any modification to the data source at the server level, Carrabino said.

The developer defines the data and the end points. As applications are running, they can change through various configurations for synchronization such as hub-and-spoke or P2P. "The framework is intelligent enough to reach out and sync with other applications that are also sync-enabled," he said.

In practice, the synchronization works like this: When company auditors travel to a remote site and store information on laptops as they work, the devices will sync P2P-style. Once the auditors have finished collecting the information and return to headquarters, they can then consolidate it into a central server.

"Developers can finally use a consistent architecture for developing apps that are sync-enabled. It's no longer 'roll your own' sync technology into every application; it provides consistency to the enterprise and alleviates developers’ headaches in time and energy figuring out a complicated problem," said Carrabino.

There’s no question that offline access to server-based data is a huge issue for developers. Users want Outlook-style connectivity, where it’s easy to read and compose e-mail offline, and it gets sent or updated as soon as you reconnect. But synchronizing enterprise data is very tricky, said Directions on Microsoft analyst Greg DeMichillie.

“Anyone who has used a smartphone to sync their calendar or address book has had the experience of calendar entries showing up twice or vanishing completely,” he said. “That’s annoying when it’s my lunch meeting that gets mangled, but it’s a disaster when it’s mission-critical data. So the key question is whether the Sync Framework can deliver the right level of reliability, and how hard it is for developers to create the logic to reconcile conflicts.”

No Sole Provider
Microsoft’s Ajenstat noted that the framework is platform- and vendor-independent: It will interact with any database or Web service, data type or protocol. A metadata repository keeps track of changes, and syncs to the datastore, making the underlying data type a non-issue.

As an example, Carrabino said that when a USB jump drive is inserted into a participating machine, the framework puts the information onto the drive with metadata to perform the synchronization. The jump drive will sync automatically when it is plugged into another machine.

The piece that ties all of the different providers together is a rules engine developed by Microsoft. The framework is also programmatic, and developers can create business rules with logic such as conflict detection, resolution and rollbacks, Ajenstat explained.

"By tying providers together we can sync anything that we want," said Ajenstat, adding that the company hopes that it can build a community to the point where providers are shared or even made open source—provided it makes sense to do that. Microsoft will provide samples and prescriptive guidance for developers to build their own providers.

Out of the box, Microsoft will supply providers for contact information, commonly used file types such as PDFs, and databases including SQL Server, as well as incorporating RSS and ATOM feeds. The Simple Sharing Extensions enable Web services to synchronize data with any platform.

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