Microsoft sets out new model for its 'Oslo' modeling language

Since September of last year, Betanews could barely do a story about one or two specific, related Microsoft technologies, code named "Oslo" and "Dublin," without getting a call or comment from the department responsible for the other technology saying our perspective was all wrong. This despite, at one point, providing the transcript of most of a complete interview with the product manager responsible for Oslo, which includes Microsoft's very innovative M modeling language, and which will become a core component of Visual Studio 2010.

Yesterday morning, company engineer Douglas Purdy, a product unit manager on the Oslo project, acknowledged all the confusion that had been generated over associating the modeling language with Dublin, arguably a very different technology for Windows Server, giving it the ability to deploy cloud services. In a blog post, Purdy explained that the company now intends to treat these separate technologies as separate, and to stop extending the boundaries of Oslo into Ireland and Dublin into Norway.

"We started using the term 'Oslo' for only the modeling platform pieces of the overall vision," Purdy wrote. "In addition, we would roll out a bunch of technologies in the .NET 4.0 wave. So when you hear about things like WF 4.0, WCF 4.0, 'Dublin,' MEF [Managed Extensibility Framework], the unified XAML stack -- all of those things were part of 'Oslo' at some stage."

At PDC 2009 in Los Angeles next November, Purdy said, the company will formally cease using the term "Oslo" to refer to any technologies whatsoever. Up to that time, he added, the company will begin merging its ADO.NET and M working groups into a single group, and plans to hold several PDC talks -- including with M's personal champion, Don Box -- explaining how the two methodologies "align."

In a statement that could raise eyebrows, Purdy noted how the M database that maintains the model for other databases under development is "just a SQL Server database." At PDC last year, when Box made that same revelation to attendees, it was with a brighter undertone, and it was received very positively -- developers didn't want a new schema, they preferred a methodology they could already interpret and manipulate.

But this new characterization implies the merging of marketing groups, which with other projects in the past has led to the kind of back-burnering that leads to delays. Purdy noted that PDC attendees this year will learn "how this notion of 'model-driven software' evolves with the existing .NET FX investments," which may or may not be euphemism for the kind of blending that takes place for a company facing budget cuts.