I think there is a lot of confusion in developer community as to where is Microsoft going with Astoria, Silverlight, SQL Server Data Services and Entity Framework. I just read an article on VS Magazine titled Manipulate Data in the Cloud with ADO.NET. After reading I realized that article simply covers Data Services and REST implementation etc but doesn’t really show anything remotely related to cloud. I guess the author forgot the cloud in a cloud 
Don’t get me wrong I liked the article but don’t agree with the title. Sometimes I feel I am the only one pulling my hair looking at some of the new stuff being thrown in by Microsoft. I think my dream of being able to create applications by just thinking about them isn’t going to be a reality anytime soon.
Roger Jennings said
Hi, Scott,
All you need to do to put your data in the cloud with ADO.NET Data Sources (Astoria) is to move it to the other side of the firewall and add authentication and authorization code. The plan is for Astoria to be the on-premises version of SQL Server Data Services.
Cheers,
–rj