Introduction

Bringing Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone together

What problem does it solve?

How does it do it?

We are pleased to announce our Telerik UI for Windows Phone Q1 2014 release goes live today! As usual, this release contains numerous improvements as well as various bug fixes, but I’d like to call out Telerik Data Storage in particular. Telerik Data Storage is the first component which utilizes the concept of the common Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 platform. In this blog post, we will browse through its features by highlighting how it builds on-top of SQLite making your life easier when dealing with locally stored data on the mobile device.Those that have been building Window Store Apps using UI for Windows 8 are probably familiar with our offline data storage solution simply called, Data Storage . Additionally, it is also known that up until now, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 have been sharing a significant amount of native APIs that allowed for writing common and reusable logic across both platforms. We experimented in this direction and managed to port the Data Storage component to our Windows Phone 8 suite keeping the same API and features. With Q1 2014 you can get your hands on the fruits of our recent efforts. Keep reading to see how this component will ease the pain of managing large amounts of data in your mobile app.The Telerik Data Storage for Windows Phone allows you transparently build and manage locally stored data on your mobile device without having to deal with the complexity of a standard SQL database. Using a locally stored database engine is actually a very common scenario when we talk about functional Windows Phone applications. We’ve all worked with SQLite and its old-school “CREATE TABLE” approach to managing the structure of the database. With the term “old-school”, I don’t mean that it’s deprecated or unneeded, it’s just too complicated and unmaintainable for the plain mobile-app-purpose.

The Data Storage component is actually built on-top of SQLite for Windows Phone. Its core engine is written in C++ and it is optimized for the mobile world. What’s more important about it however is the fact that it does not simply wrap SQLite functionality, but extends it. Adding simple ORM features, LINQ to SQL, Indices, Async and automatic schema inference – the Telerik Data Storage for Windows Phone is a powerful tool that allows you to organize your app’s data, without worrying about what happens when your models need to be updated with new properties for your next version.

We have additionally prepared a set of help articles that should get you started with this new component: from its installation to the way it’s referenced and used in Visual Studio.

Last but not least: discontinued support for WP7 starting Q2 2014

Since the Windows Phone 8 SDK has been out since 10/30/2012 and the public trends suggest that more and more users are carrying Windows Phone 8 devices, we’ve decided to discontinue support for WP7 starting with our Q2 2014 release. By focusing on the features included in Windows Phone 8 (and the upcoming ones in Windows Phone 8.1), we believe this will allow us to implement more features and improvements in our control suite. If you have an existing app using Windows Phone 7, you can still use our previous releases until you migrate your project to Windows Phone 8. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us.

Wrap-up

As always you can download the release from your account or download the trial if you don’t have an account. We would love to have your feedback and help shape future versions of this product. You can do this by visiting the Telerik Windows Phone Feedback Portal. Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoy experimenting with the new Data Storage for Windows Phone 8.



P.S. Don’t forget to register for our DevCraft Q1 2014 Online Conference taking place on March 6th at 11AM EST.