Redmond Diary

By Andrew J. Brust

Blog archive

*Sync This!*

Liveside.net and Mary Jo Foley are reporting that rumors of Live Mesh’s death are greatly exaggerated. That’s excellent, as far as I’m concerned. Mesh is a good product, and it would be a huge pain if I had to switch to something else were Redmond to kill it.

Meanwhile, I continue to find it fascinating how many sync standards Microsoft has across its product set. Here’s a list of them (excluding Live Sync and Live Mesh), and I’m betting it’s not comprehensive. Can you think of others?

  • ActiveSync (for Windows Mobile over USB and BlueTooth)
  • Exchange Active Sync (used over the Internet, including 3G services)
  • Windows Offline Folders
  • Windows Media Player sync
  • Zune sync
  • Sync Framework and ADO.NET Sync Services (for database synchronization)
  • SQL Server Replication
  • Access/Jet database replication and JRO (Jet Replication Objects)
  • SharePoint/Outlook list/library synchronization
  • OneNote shared notebook synchronization
  • Live Messenger Sharing Folders

I formulated a similar list almost two years ago, when I wrote a post on my first impressions of Live Mesh. But things here are not getting better, and they need to. I’d like to see a common sync facility that every Microsoft product needing such services could build upon. Just (please) don’t base it on the Entity Framework!

Posted by Andrew J. Brust on 02/25/2010


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