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Cool new article on MSDN by Early and Adopter, “Northwind Unplugged: Building a Semi-Connected Application in Visual Basic .NET”

“Demonstrates how you can build a semi-connected application using Visual Basic .NET. This application automatically detects the connection state and seamlessly switches between online and offline. When offline, any changes to data are automatically cached, and when the connection is reestablished, the data is automatically synchronized with the server. “

In their blog they summarize a couple of key points:

1. IMHO, we've passed the day where it's acceptable to put a big red toggle switch on an application marked "Online / Offline" that the user has to flip.  If an application can work offline, then it should be the responsibility of the application to realize it's offline.
2. If you want to build such an application, the .NET framework contains some important pieces, but unfortunately much of the plumbing lands on the shoulders of the developer to write.  This is unfortunate.  I think many applications would like to work semi-connected, but it ain't easy to build or test today.

The sample is pretty simple, but covers the key parts. I really like the idea of not requiring the user to determine if they want to work online or offline. The simple ping technique they illustrate will have pretty low overhead, so it almost seems like a no-brainer decision if you are building this kind of application.

Update: Sam agrees.