As Microsoft is getting closer to the availability deadline for the ADO.NET Data Services, the company announced a major shift in its plans. In this context, Mike Flasko, Data Services, lead program manager, explained that the software giant decided to swap the ship vehicle for the services. The ADO.NET Data Services is essentially a collection of patterns and libraries designed to simplify the creation and consumption of web-based data services. The framework was set up from the get go to enhance the .NET Framework. During the development process Microsoft choose to react to feedback from early adopters indicating that the company needed to limit the number of Data Service releases.

“To address this need we have decided to change the ship vehicle for the release to be an in-place update of the data services binaries that shipped with the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 (instead of a SxS release as was the case for the v1.5 CTP1 release). The release will ship as a redistributable update to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, which will include enhanced data services runtime assemblies and an updated datasvcutil.exe command line tool,” Flasko explained.

Microsoft sent out an email to testers already playing around with the Community Technology Preview releases of ADO.NET Data Services, explaining the move. The update to the target release plan for the next version of Data Services is designed to come in conjunction with the GA for the final bits, the software giant explained.

“As you’d expect, since the release is shipping as an update to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, all the binaries shipped with the release will be named as they were in the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 release (i.e. System.Data.Services.*.dll). In addition to shipping an update to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1, we’ll release a new Silverlight 3-compatible client library and the .NET-related client and server features from the .NET 3.5 SP1 update release will be directly included in the subsequent .NET Framework 4.0 release,” Flasko added.

Specifically, Microsoft has decided to turn the next iteration of the ADO.NET Data Services into an in-place update to the .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. In this regard, the Redmond company will also change the moniker for the release. “v1.5” will disappear entirely, and the bits will be referred to as the Data Services Update for the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

“We aren’t yet ready to talk about a specific release date (we’re getting close), but we are focused on this calendar year as our target window to release the update to the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. After that, as mentioned above, the feature set will be directly included in the subsequent .NET Framework 4 release,” Flasko explained.

ADO.NET Data Services 1.5 CTP2 is available for download here.

.NET Framework 4 Beta 2 is available for download here.

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional Beta 2 and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Beta 2 are available for download via this link.