The M Programming Language (Oslo)

Eyal — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:07:58 GMT

”Oslo” is the codename for Microsoft’s forthcoming modeling platform that helps you build your own textual models. Modeling is used across a wide range of domains and allows more people to participate in application design and allows developers to write applications at a much higher level of abstraction. “Oslo” consists of:

A tool that helps people define and interact with textual models in a rich and visual manner
A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data models
A relational repository that makes models available to both tools and platform components

To get started, you need the latest version of Olso itself. You get it from Microsoft "Oslo" SDK - January 2009 CTP. You'll get the SDK that contains documentation, samples, copies of the “Oslo” models written in "M", and tools designed to help you write your own models in "M", including the code name “Intellipad” tool for code name “Oslo”. You'll need Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 to use the repository.

An excellent introduction to M is provided by Bart in a series of posts:

IHateSpaghetti {code} : M

The M Programming Language (Oslo)

Getting Started with Oslo – Introducing “M”

The M Programming Language – Part 1 – Structural Typing

The M Programming Language – Part 2 – Collections and Extents