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Remodeling Oslo

With PDC less than a week away, you might be asking yourself, whatever happened to "Oslo"?

The "Oslo" app dev modeling platform was first floated at the Microsoft SOA & Business Process Conference 2007 in late October. It was positioned as an umbrella concept that would affect the next versions of .NET/Visual Studio, BizTalk Server and BizTalk Services, and System Center.

The following October at PDC08, "Oslo" re-emerged as languages and tools intended to make developers more productive by allowing them to easily create DSLs and to store reusable models and definitions in a repository based on SQL Server. The idea intrigued many developers at PDC08, who were handed technology previews of some of the components.

Three CTPs later, the technology is evolving yet again, only this time, it has been reincarnated as "SQL Server Modeling." Someone alert the ShirleyGram (Shirley MacLaine's newsletter).

According to Doug Purdy's From "Oslo" to SQL Server Modeling blog, which explains Microsoft's latest decision, the "M" language, Quadrant modeling tool and repository will likely be renamed and ship as part of a future SQL Server release.

Here's how Purdy describes the functionality, some of which is expected in the first SQL Server Modeling CTP, available for public download on Nov. 17th, the first day of PDC09:

“M” is a highly productive, developer friendly, textual language for defining schemas, queries, values, functions and DSLs for SQL Server databases.

“Quadrant” is a customizable tool for interacting with large datasets stored in SQL Server databases.

“Repository” is a SQL Server role for the secure sharing of models between applications and systems.

Microsoft says it is making these changes based on software design reviews and customer feedback. According to Purdy, developers will be able to use the SQL Server Modeling technologies with T-SQL, ADO.NET, ASP.NET and other parts of .NET.

What's your take on Oslo's latest reincarnation as SQL Server Modeling? Is this type of tooling needed to help developers with database applications or is it yet another data access layer? Express your thoughts below or drop me a line at krichards@1105media.com

Posted by Kathleen Richards on 11/10/2009 at 2:56 PM

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Reader Comments:

Thu, Nov 19, 2009 Ioan

Totally agree with Dody. I hardly expected all the modelling stuff like M, MGrammar, MGraph, Quadrant, and now to see that all these move in the SQL Server yard... Dissapointing.

Mon, Nov 16, 2009 Fallon Massey

Looks like declaring victory and leaving. I'm not sure why we need this instead of the original vision of Oslo(which I loved), but there it is...

Thu, Nov 12, 2009

I'm pretty confuse about this shift from Redmond, modeling/DSL's and others in my point of view are tools to design software, granted you might want to model a database, but that's one DSL in itself, the idea of creating your own DSL's is well beyond database, I don't think even belong there, of course my comment is based in the few information I know about Oslo, and that might be the reason of my confusion! Modeling/DSL/M just don't make sense in SQL server for me, they make sense in Visual Studio! Hopefully this changes, I was actually waiting for it!

Thu, Nov 12, 2009 Dody Gunawinata

Microsoft has been coming up fast and furious with their data access technologies (ADO, EF, LinqSQL, Astoria, etc) and now it has claimed another victim. The original vision of Oslo was right and bold and it excited a lot of .Net developers. Mind you, we are .Net developers - not SQL Server Database Developers. By this shift, they change their target market from millions of developers to at most 100,000 people. This is a stupid and terrible move.