SSE: Simple Sharing Extensions

Since a few weeks the term SSE is getting really hot. But what is it exactly? First post about SSE was from Ray Ozzie, he wrote about “the RSS of synchronization”. They created an RSS extension that we refer to as Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE). In just a few weeks time, several Microsoft product groups and ‘concept development group’ from Ray built prototypes and demos, and found that it works and interoperates quite nicely. Microsoft is even releasing the SSE specification under a Creative Commons license (that’s new;).
Well, i wasn’t sure about SSE the first time, to me it was a kind of two-way RSS traffic that could solve the problem of information-synchronisastion. Not only between different devices but also between different users, databases and software. I think that idea still stands but now there´s a new post from the Microsoft RSS Team that tries to explain SSE some more. They gave a good example about the use; “you might create the initial calendar entries for when you want to travel. The travel agent might edit those entries to include the exact date. You might then add entries for specific tours that you might want to take. The travel agent could then edit those entries to include additional information (time/place, reservation info, etc.)“.
But why should I use SSE as opposed to some other synchronization technology? “SSE is ideal for replicating data that can be published in an RSS feed. That includes lists of items such as calendar appointments, contacts, favorites, and news items. In addition, SSE is ideal for bidirectional, asynchronous replication, particularly for scenarios where multiple people can edit or create entries. Like RSS, SSE was designed with simplicity in mind, and developers will find that implementing SSE replication is easy, especially for an application that already supports RSS.”