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Syndication - Beyond the News

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The next version of the .NET Framework (Orcas) includes support for web programming via WCF. In this context, web programming is the inclusion of web-centric protocols and constructs into the WCF programming model. Specifically, the WCF-related parts of Orcas support HTTP GET-style programming, HTTP OTHER-style programming, URI-centric resource mapping, rich content-type support, JSON message encodings, and the ability to create and consume syndications. This post relates to syndication. I'll talk about the other WCF features in subsequent posts.

When most of us think about syndication, we think about RSS and/or ATOM news/blog feeds. From experience, most of us don't consider any other uses for syndication.

Consider, for a moment, what syndication actually is. It is simply a set of data that is represented in some format. The format can be RSS, ATOM, SSE, <insert new format here>. 

If syndication is the representation of some data, what kinds of data can we syndicate? As it turns out, there is quite a bit: the canonical purchase order example, package deliveries (consider UPS tracking-like capability), moves in an instance of a game, contact lists, <I could go on but won't>. The point here is that syndications are applicable far beyond our instinctual association with news.

We use aggregators (Outlook, IE7, others) to render syndications in a palatable format. If syndications are useful outside of getting the news, do we ever need more than a simple aggregator to consume syndications? The answer is "more than likely". Undoubtedly, many will continue to use standard aggregators to consume feeds (news and other interesting data). These aggregators are not enough for all applications. To be truly useful, we have to be able to consume a syndication and take action based on the contents of that syndication.

If you find yourself wondering "Self, why is there syndication support in Orcas? Is Microsoft trying to make it easier to create and consume news/blog feeds?"

The answer is that we (here at Microsoft) think syndication is a useful way to represent some sets of data. Furthermore, we (here at Microsoft) want to provide a set of tools that provide feature rich, easy, and flexible syndication capabilities.

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