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Download details: Microsoft Sync Framework SDK
Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK)

Brief Description

Microsoft Sync Framework is a comprehensive synchronization platform that enables collaboration and offline scenarios for applications, services, and devices. Using Microsoft Sync Framework, developers can build applications that synchronize data from any source using any protocol over any network.

 

Overview

Sync Framework 2.0 Overview
Sync Framework 2.0 expands on the capabilities offered by Sync Framework 1.0:

• Adds features that cater to new scenarios or scenarios that were difficult to support.
• Reduces the amount of work required to develop providers.
• Supports more data sources with new built-in providers.

The major new features and improvements included in Sync Framework 2.0 are:

In Core Components:

• Simple Providers: Reduce the amount of work required to develop providers, especially when the data source has very few synchronization-related capabilities, such as change-tracking. The goal is to enable a developer to write a provider without having to become a synchronization expert. The majority of the code that is required for a simple provider is limited to that responsible for interacting with the data source. Simple providers support many complex synchronization scenarios, such as filtering, concurrency and constraint conflict handling, and anchor-based enumeration.
• Flexible Filtering: Change unit filters and custom filters have been added to the custom provider components. These filters, in addition to the item filters from Sync Framework 1.0, enable you to filter your data in whatever way is most useful. Filter negotiation allows the source and destination providers to negotiate the filter used during the synchronization session. Change unit filters enable a provider to specify that, while the replica it serves stores all items in the synchronization scope, the replica stores a reduced representation of each item. For example, when an item is a contact a device might store only the name and phone number of the contact as compared to the complete contact stored on a PC. Custom filters enable you to define a filter in whatever way is most appropriate, including filters that allow an item to move into or out of the filter as the item data changes. For example, a media storage device stores only songs that are rated as three stars or better. When the rating on a song changes from four stars to two stars, the song moves out of the filter. Filter negotiation allows a destination provider to specify the filter to be used by the source provider during change enumeration; the source provider can accept or reject a filter. If a source provider does not support the requested filter then the destination provider can choose to receive all of the data and do the filtering itself.
• Improved Conflict Handling: Additional conflict scenarios are supported, such as reporting constraint conflicts, managing logged conflicts, and resolving conflicts by using a last-writer-wins policy. Constraint conflicts are conflicts that violate constraints that are put on items or change units, such as the relationship of folders or the location of identically named data within a file system. Sync Framework includes components to help resolve constraint conflicts and apply the resolution to the destination replica. Conflict logging is enhanced by Sync Framework components that help manage the log, such as by removing obsolete conflicts. A last-writer-wins conflict resolution policy can be used to resolve concurrency conflicts (in which an item is updated by more than one replica) by keeping the most recently made change, regardless of where the change was made. Sync Framework supports this policy by enabling an application to retrieve the time a change was made on the source and destination replicas. The application can then compare the two times and apply the last change.
• Data Conversion between Providers: In some scenarios, synchronization providers synchronize the same type of data (such as sales data), but the data format that each provider requires is different. To address this scenario, Sync Framework enables you to implement interfaces that convert data to the format that each provider requires. In addition to data conversion APIs that can be used for any type of custom provider, Sync Framework also includes conversion APIs specifically for the file synchronization provider.
• Change Application Service: Increases the flexibility and usefulness of the change applier component of Sync Framework. By performing the same actions as the standard change applier, but in a more granular way, the change application service gives a destination provider the ability to use only the features that it requires.
• Tracing: Enables you to trace the execution of several components, which is useful during application debugging. This download provides the .tmf files that can be used to view a trace, flush the logger, and format the binary trace file. For more information about how to trace Sync Framework execution, see “Tracing Sync Framework Components” in the documentation that installs with the Sync Framework SDK.

In Database Providers:

• New Database Providers (SQL Server and SQL Server Compact): Enable hub-and-spoke and peer-to-peer synchronization for SQL Server, SQL Server Express, and SQL Server Compact. Sync Framework automatically creates all of the commands that are required to communicate with each database. You do not have to write synchronization queries as you do with other providers. The providers support: flexible initialization options; batching of changes based on data size; and maintenance tasks, such as metadata cleanup and server database restore.
• Robust Memory-Based Batching: Previous versions of Sync Framework and Sync Services for ADO.NET provided a way for developers to define their own batching logic but there were a lot of limitations, including significant complexity, excessive chattiness, out of memory issues, and restrictions on usage. Sync Framework 2.0 addresses all of these issues by providing a more complete and robust batching API. Developers no longer have to write batching logic themselves because Sync Framework divides changes into batches based on several properties in the API. Batches are now defined by memory consumption rather than the number of rows synchronized, which has eliminated out-of-memory issues for most common scenarios.
• Provisioning and Management APIs: Provisioning and initialization activities that were previously exposed only through Visual Studio tooling have now been added to the database provider APIs. This includes the ability to provision an existing database by adding the change-tracking tables and triggers that are required by Sync Framework. It also includes the ability to start with an empty database, create the user schema, and provision that schema based on another server or client database that has already been provisioned.
• Performance Improvements: The new database providers in this release have been thoroughly tested in large-scale scenarios in which a single server supports thousands of clients with hundreds of concurrent synchronization operations. This testing resulted in a large number of internal performance improvements that enable Sync Framework database providers to perform as well as other Microsoft technologies like Remote Data Access (RDA) while offering a wide range of capabilities that compete with end-to-end solutions like merge replication.

For more information about new features, see “What’s New in Sync Framework 2.0” in the documentation that installs with the Sync Framework SDK, or click the link: What’s New in Sync Framework 2.0

Redistributable
To download the Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 redistributables and bootstrapper, rather than the SDK package, click on the link: Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 Redistributable Package

Download details: SyncToy 2.1
SyncToy 2.1

Overview

Overview
There are files from all kinds of sources that we want to store and manage. Files are created by our digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops. Increasingly, computer users are using different folders, drives, and even different computers (such as a laptop and a desktop) to store, manage, retrieve and view files. Yet managing hundreds or thousands of files is still largely a manual operation. In some cases it is necessary to regularly get copies of files from another location to add to primary location; in other cases there is a need to keep two storage locations exactly in sync. Some users manage files manually, dragging and dropping from one place to another and keeping track of whether the locations are synchronized in their heads. Other users may use two or more applications to provide this functionality.

Now there is an easier way. SyncToy, a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows, is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. Most common operations can be performed with just a few clicks of the mouse, and additional customization is available without additional complexity. SyncToy can manage multiple sets of folders at the same time; it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

SyncToy2.1 is powered by the latest synchronization engine from Microsoft Sync Framework 2.0 and provides better performance and robustness. The new features and improvements included in SyncToy 2.1 release are:

• Better Performance: The speed of file copy operations is significantly increased across the board.
• Improved Robustness: Much more resilient to transient network and file system errors and better error reporting which pin-points which file the sync failed on in case there’s a fatal error that stops the sync.
• Folder pair configuration backup: Folder pair configuration is automatically backed up under %localappdata%\microsoft\synctoy\2.0. User can replace SyncToyDirPairs.bin with the backup copy to resolve last saved configuration.
• Bug Fixes:
  • Fixed the data corruption issue when using SyncToy with NAS drives.
  • Fixed the issue that prevented uploading files to SharePoint when using SyncToy 2.0.
  • Fixed the issue that prevented delete changes from being synchronized when the sync option is set to “Echo”.
  • Fixed the UI issue where reported file time were off by the difference between local time and UTC when destination is a FAT volume.

The major new features and improvements included in previous SyncToy 2.0 release are:

• Dynamic Drive Letter Assignment: Drive letter reassignment will now be detected and updated in the folder pair definition.
• True Folder Sync: Folder creates, renames and deletes are now synchronized for all SyncToy actions.
• Exclusion Filtering Based on Name: File exclusion based on name with exact or fuzzy matching.
• Filtering Based on File Attributes: The ability to exclude files based on one or more file attributes (Read-Only, System, Hidden).
• Unattended Folder Pair Execution: Addressed issues related to running scheduled folder pairs while logged off.
• Folder Pairs With Shared Endpoints: Ability for folder pairs associated with the same or different instances of SyncToy to share end-points.
• Command line enhancements: Added the ability to manage folder pairs via the command line interface.
• Re-Architect Sync Engine: The SyncToy engine has been rearchitected to provide scalability and the ability to add significant enhancements in future releases.
• Sync engine is also more robust insomuch that many single, file level errors are skipped without affecting the entire sync operation.
• Sync Encrypted Files: Sync of Encrypted files works when local folder and files are encrypted, which addresses the common scenario involving sync between local, encrypted laptop PC folder and remote, unencrypted desktop PC folder.
• 64-Bit Support: SyncToy now has a native 64-bit build (x64 only) for 64-bit versions of Windows.
• Folder pair rename
• Sub-folder Exclusion Enhancements: Descendents created under excluded sub-folders are automatically excluded. Usability improvements for the sub-folder exclusion dialog.
• Folder Pair Metadata Moved: Folder pair metadata removed from MyDocuments to resolve any issues with server-based folder pair re-direction setup.
• Setup Improvements: Integrated setup with single self-extracting archive file and no extra downloads if you already have .NET Framework 2.0 installed. Enabled silent install for the SyncToy Installer file (see readme.txt file for more information).

Please continue to send us feedback about our tool, using the SyncToy – File Synchronization forum (listed below).

Note: We’ve taken great care to ensure that this tool operates as it should, but it is not part of Windows and is not supported by Microsoft Technical Support. For this reason, Microsoft Technical Support is unable to answer questions about SyncToy. To speak to other users and contribute feedback about your experiences with SyncToy, please use the SyncToy forum at http://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/synctoy/threads.

Download details: Microsoft SharedView
Microsoft SharedView

Brief Description

Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what’s on your screen. Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time. A Windows Live ID (Passport, Hotmail, or MSN) is required to start sessions, but not to join sessions. New in version 1.0: we have added a web based join experience to make SharedView even easier

 

Overview

Hold more effective meetings and conference calls
Connect with up to 15 people in different locations and get your point across by showing them what’s on your screen.

Work together in real time
Share, review, and update documents with multiple people in real time.

Use when and where you want
SharedView is easy to use, from anywhere, at a moment’s notice.

Click here to learn more about the Microsoft SharedView.