ADO.NET Data Services is a framework for developing REST-style interfaces for working with collections of structured data. Released with .NET 3.5 SP1, it is currently considered to be a major part of Microsoft’s ever-changing data access strategy.
The first CTP of ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 brings with it the following features
- Two-way data-binding for WCF and Silverlight applications
- Row counts, without downloading all the rows at the same time
- Customization for AtomPub feeds
- Server-driven paging
- Support for arbitrarily large BLOBs
ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 is expected to be an out-of-band release. This means it will be released when the team feels it’s ready rather than waiting until .NET 4. With the ever increasing number of libraries Microsoft is planning for .NET, this kind of ad-hock release schedule may become the norm.