A year ago, I had the pleasure of delivering two talks at an architect’s forum in Helsinki. The first talk was about services and Microsoft solution for SOA. The second one was about models and Microsoft solution at that time with DSLs and Visual Studio Team Architect.
The reason I needed two talks is because those two topics were not really related to one another. During that time, I didn't really know that these two topics that I'm so passionate about would converge into a powerful solution called Oslo.
Oslo's first CTP will be available for the public during PDC two weeks from now.
Some of the components in Oslo are:
- A visual designer (codenamed "Quadrant") - A tool that helps people define and interact with models in a rich and visual manner.
- The modeling language (codenamed "M") - A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data models. Oslo extends Visual Studio’s support for graphical DSLs, adds new textual DSL capabilities and provides a repository for models of all kinds. On a personal note, it is great for me to see that DSLs that I was evangelizing in the last three years are realizing their potential as the modeling foundation for Oslo.
- A "relational repository" - A relational repository that makes models available to both tools and platform components. Developers can use existing database tools such as Access, Excel, SQL Server Reporting or Analytical Services in addition to "Quadrant” to view and manipulate the models.
Figure - Screenshot of “Quadrant” from David Chappell's talk on Oslo during Tech-Ed Orlando
Oslo is also about services and it will make it easier to build service oriented solutions in organizations by providing models and DSLs for defining workflows and services. Over time, these models will be executed directly by the new Windows Server “Dublin” technologies, but that’s another topic for a different post. Isn’t it?