Live Framework Overview

Live Framework Overview

• Day Two
• James McClutcheon
• 9AM
• The security tokens I was given enables me to access http://connection.microsoft.com/
• I can do the labs later (only need Visual Studio, the tokens and download the CTP of Mesh)

 Agenda

• Background
• What is Live Framework
• Example Experience

 The state of the world

• People are increasingly “on-the-go”
• They are using more devices
• Connectivity is proliferating
• Life-styles and work-styles are blending
• They are working and playing together more digitally
• => Increasingly Expecting – Demanding – Complete End-to-end Experiences…

 Market & Technology Trends

• “Experience first” clients
  • iTunes/ITMS
  • Live Photo Gallery / Flickr
  • Live Mail / Photo Mail
  • Office / Office Live Workspace
  • Outlook / Salesforce Outlook Edition
• Platform point solutions
  • Cloud storage
  • Offline application
  • Device synch and access
  • 3rd party extensibility
• What if you had one integrated platform designed to support the rich client experience in a standard, open way?

 Getting off the island

• Connected experience through services and devices working together
• Connectivity and communication is everything
• => Live Framework: Connecting devices, data and applications through a consistent, approachable framework

 Live Services

• User-centric data:
  • Identity
  • Contacts
  • Files
  • Calendar
  • …
• User-centric services:
  • Resource Model: Extensible, user-centric data store
  • Sync: User centric data synchronization
  • App Mgmt: Discover, provision & share apps
  • Device Mgmt: Management of a user’s devices

 Key Concepts

• Live fx is the uniform way for programming Live Services
  • Any platform
  • Any programming language
  • Any application or device
• Live fx makes it easy to build software + service applications
• .NET developers can use the Live fx API Kits to build applications

 Live Framework Design Principles

• User-centric to the core
• Software plus Services distributed platform
  • Universal reach + “experience first”
  • Design for humans and code
• Internet scale
• Re-use proven assets

 What is Live Framework?

• Platform
  • Data model and API for a S+S system
  • Integration and symmetry between devices and cloud
• Service
  • Microsoft’s hosted instance of the Live Framework
• Software
  • Client runtime for mesh-aware applications
  • Servers for federated Live Framework components
• Sample application
  • Demonstrating depth of Live Framework enabled by the platform

 Live Framework Scenarios

• Integrate Live Services into your applications
• Opt in to as much of the Live Framework as you like
• Expose your applications as Mesh Applications
• => Rich + Reach Applications

 Demo

• https://developer.mesh-ctp.com/
• Blockbuster favourites

 Live Framework Nutshell

• Cloud Services
• Client Runtime

 Understanding Live Framework: Platform value

• Key benefits
  • Distributed system for data replication
  • Designed for “optimize online, enable offline” experience
  • Symmetric API for serviceóservice and app<->service
  • Flexible data model to suit application needs
  • Microsoft-hosted data-centre and operations
  • Guaranteed communications regardless of topology
  • Great tool-ability
• Target platform applications
  • Traditional client applications (e.g. Office, Photo Gallery, Media Player)
  • New classes of connected applications (e.g. Media Centre, Zune)
  • Rich interactive applications (e.g. New York Times Reader, MetaCafe)
  • Cloud services and universal web applications (e.g. SkyDrive, Flickr)

 Understanding Live Framework: Programming Model

• APIs: REST
• Resource Model: Feeds
• Symmetric client/cloud programming model
• Strongly typed managed code wrappers for simplified access
• Pub/sub support for pushing notifications on most resources

 Experience Demos

• Share file across devices
• Access apps across the internet
• Extend windows to the web and web to windows

 Demo Recap

• Live Folders: Share and synchronize your information automatically across all your connected devices
• Live Remote: Access to any application or device
• Live PC: Browser based experience that enables access to your applications and information from anywhere

 Core Tenets

• Symmetric programming model
• Protocol based
• Resource oriented
• Simple infoset
  • Entities
  • Collections
  • Relationships
• Standards based
• Unified model for all Live types

 Resource Model

• Consists of resources and their relationships
• Resources
  • Uniquely addressable
  • Based on a simple infoset
  • Can be rendered to various wire representations
• Relationships
  • Navigatable, can be inlined
• Uniform access to all Windows Live resources types
  • Contacts, Profiles, News, Activities, Friends
  • MeshObjects (includes Files, Folders, Photos)
  • Devices
  • Applications

 Live Operating Environment

• Top level container
• Contains
  • Contact Collection
  • Profiles
  • Mesh
  • Possibly other Live data
• Available online/offline

 Mesh

• Owned/Controlled by the user
• Contains all the information about: Devices, Data, Applications, News aggregation

 Mesh Objects

• Top level resource container
• All contained resources are related
• Unit of permission/distribution
• Contains: DataFeeds, Mappings, Members, News

 DataFeed

• Unit of synchronization
• Container for: DataEntry, FeedSync, MediaResource
• Can contain other DataFeeds to create hierarchy

 Data Entry

• Smallest unit of data
• Specifies the actual data being stored
• Can contain enclosures of application defined schema

  Authentication

• How do I identify myself?

 Web Applications

• Cookie token
  • Obtained from Windows Live ID
  • Connects as the user
• Delegated Authentication
  • Token based
  • User provides consent
  • Has expiration
  • Is Revokable
  • Provides ACL like restrictions

 Smart Client Applications

• Local Mesh is already authenticated
• Cloud Mesh
  • App must provide log in dialog
  • App must provide credentials to cloud API

  Live fx Cloud APIs Resource Access

• Relative URI
• Optimistic Concurrency
• HTTP verbs
  • GET
  • PUT
  • OPTIONS
  • DELETE

 GET a resource

• Retrieves the feed for the resource
• Common return codes
  • OK
  • Internal Server Error
• Request Headers
  • Accept
  • ContentLength
  • ContentType
  • IfModifiedSince
  • Authorization
  • Cookie

 PUT a resource

• Updates the resource
• Common return codes
  • OK
  • InternalServerError
  • PreconditionFailed
• Request Headers
  • IfMatch
  • ContentLength
  • ContentType
  • Authorization
  • Cookie

 DELETE a resource

• Deletes a resource
• Common return codes
  • OK
  • InternalServerError
  • PreconditionFailed
• Request Headers
  • IfMatch
  • Authorization
  • Cookie

 OPTIONS for a resource

• Returns information about the resource
  • Authentication model
  • Concurrency model
  • Whether the resource is subscribe-able
  • Whether the resource is extensible
  • List of supported media types
  • Life of supported query parameters
  • List of relationships for the resource
  • List of supported methods (Verbs)
  • XML Schema Definition (XSD) for the resource
• Common return codes
  • OK
  • InternalServerError
  • PreconditionFailed
• Request Headers
  • IfMatch
  • Authorization
  • Cookie

 Demo

• The Resource Browser is your friend!
• But I don’t know ATOM!
• No problem

 Multiple Formats

• Feed types available today
  • ATOM
  • RSS
  • JSON
  • POX

  But I have a lot of data!

• No problem

 Sorting & Filtering

• Don’t pull all the data down
• Pre-sort the data
• Use the power of the server

 Filter Queries

• Used only on GETs
• Add clauses to regular queries

 Filter Query Operators

• Equivalence: eq, ne, gt, lt
• Boolean: and not, or
• Output Parameters: orderby, skip, take, top

  Can I automate it?

• Resource Scripts

 Resource Scripts

• What are they?
  • Small domain specific language
  • Declarative way to interact with LOE
  • Logical equivalent of batched procedures
• Why use them?
  • Frees you from the lower level details of the HTTP protocol
  • Improves efficiency
  • Extend the Request processing pipeline with custom business logic

 Resource Scripts

• Declarative modelling for
  • Control Flow Statements: Sequence, Interleave, Conditional, CRUD
  • Data Flow Statements: Bind statements
• Run locally or on the server
• Can run as triggers
• Serialized as POX or JSON

 Statements

• SequenceStatement: Sequentially executes child statements
• InterleaveStatement: Executes child statements in parallel
• ConditionalStatement: If… Else… execution
• CRUD statements: Operate on resources

 Client vs Server

• Server Side Execution
  • Script.RunAtServer(credentials)
  • Single HTTP request/response
• Client Side (In Process) Execution
  • Script.Run(credentials)
  • Multiple HTTP requests/responses
  • Each statement generates request

 Triggers

• Attach to a resource instance
• Pre and post logic on Create, Update and Delete
• Examples:
  • Create a thumbnail after an image resource is created
  • Remove a folder if the last child object is removed

 Authoring and Running

• Create the statement DOM
• Compile the DOM and generate the ResourceScript instance
• Execute the ResourceScript instance
• If a trigger, attach to the resource

 To use the cloud API

• Understand the Resource Model
• Use standard HTTP requests
• Use the format you are comfortable with