Microsoft has announced a data web services framework called Astoria. I've not been able to access the website and play with it, but according to the blogosphere reports, its a framework for data web services. Alex Barnett has the best explanation with concrete examples.
http://astoria.mslivelabs.com/
Around the blogosphere...
- Danny Ayers says Microsoft approaches the Semantic Web.
- Roger Jennings says Astoria Enables RESTful Data Services.
IMHO, this looks a lot like Microsoft's attempt at standardizing data access over SQL (OLEDB). Grand, but doomed. I'm not gonna right-it-off until I give it a test drive, but I've got that "Yet Another Framework" feeling.