Imagine a world where one of the software giants releases their brand new operating system and a new application architecture that doesn’t allow developers to natively connect to a database. Sounds silly right?
It may sound silly but it’s our world. It’s the “right now”. It started with Windows 8, continued with Windows 8.1, and Windows 10, and the Windows 10 Creators Update. Windows 8 was available in pre-release versions as early as September 2011; nearly 6 years ago.
It’s been mind boggling to think that Windows Store Apps (UWP) have never supported a native connection to SQL Server. To connect, you needed to write and deploy a WCF web service to call from the UWP. This limited the options for Enterprise developers and made the technology less attractive.
.NET Standard 2.0
It may have taken 6 years but SYSTEM.DATA is finally coming to UWP. This means you can connect and query SQL Server directly using native code! Not only is SYSTEM.DATA coming but many other API’s are as well.
You can get a full list here:
https://github.com/dotnet/standard/blob/master/docs/versions/netstandard2.0.md
The .NET Standard 2.0 code will be available to UWP starting with the fall creators update. Hopefully we’ll see some preview code of that soon.
Read the full announcement on the Windows developer blog:
