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'Astoria' CTP Gains Silverlight Compatibility

Microsoft on Thursday released an add-on to the previously released CTP of Astoria, a nascent project based around the way data is consumed and exposed on the Web.

The CTP, which was released in May, contained a client library for accessing Astoria services from .NET-based apps. The add-on released Thursday provides a client library compatible with the Silverlight 1.1 alpha environment, as well as an API extension for executing asynchronous queries, according to Microsoft.

The company says developers can use Astoria to access and publish data across the Web more easily and directly than through SOAP-based programming. More information can be found here.

RedMonk analyst Michael Cote previously told RDN that he expects Astoria will eventually be closely tied to Silverlight, the company's cross-platform browser plug-in for delivering rich content and applications. Cote's prediction seems prescient in light of today's add-on release.

"Once you put Silverlight and Astoria together, you can see that Microsoft is building out a new development platform targeting a Web-minded way of development," Cote said at the time.

The add-on to the CTP is available for download here.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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