Why did Microsoft get rid of Velocity Distributed Cache as standalone product

appfabriccachingdistributed

I heard about Velocity several years ago when MS made a splash going head to head with MemCached.

Recently I needed to try out which solution would work best in my project: MemCached or .NET Velocity. It took me a while to find Velocity again. It seems like MS merged Velocity with some WCF tools and it is now called AppFabric.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/ee695849

I am a little worried, that this will impact how quickly MS can release new features/improvements for Velocity, now that it is a part of much bigger package.

Why did MS get rid of standalone version of Velocity, after all the effort they spent promoting it?

Best Answer

Velocity was a codename while the product was in development, I don't think there was ever an intention from Microsoft to release a standalone product called Velocity. (Apart from anything else, there's already a Java product called Velocity).

AppFabric is the output of two development projects, Velocity and Dublin (which is workflow, not WCF).

Although the two parts share an installer, if you want the distributed caching parts of AppFabric you can just install them; you're not obligated to install the whole thing. I've circled the options you need to select in the installer for the distributed caching bits in red here, the WF bits in blue. enter image description here

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