October 10th, 2008
Microsoft renames its ‘D’ language ‘M’
Microsoft is continuing to slowly trickle out details about its Oslo modeling strategy. The latest info with the Connected Systems Division (CSD) has gone public are the names of the three Oslo components it will release in Community Technology Preview (CTP) form at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC).
Oslo — which Microsoft initially outlined as encompassing everything from Visual Studio 2010, to System Center Version 5 — now is comprised of just three elements, according to the Softies:
- The modeling language, known until fairly recently as “D” (seemingly for “declarative”), which is now known as “M.” M will let developers express models in text.
- The visual modeling tool, known as Quadrant, for more complicated modeling tasks
- A shared repository, based on SQL Server, for storing models, schema and metadata. Developers can use Access, Excel, report writers and/or analytics tools to aceess and manipulate the information in the repository.
Robert Wahbe, Corporate Vice President of CSD, said Microsoft intends to deliver the final version of all three of these components as part of a future release of Visual Studio. (He didn’t specify whether it would be Visual Studio 2010 or not).
While Microsoft expects most of it users to edit their models in Visual Studio, the company also will offer a standalone editor (Intellipad) as an option.
Models are no longer just about describing applications; they are part of the applications, Wahbe said during a press tour this week.
“Every large existing application already has a model. Today, it’s hard to author the models and it’s hard to integrate the models. That is where Oslo comes in,” Wahbe said.
