The end of 'Oslo' as a language workbench?

Antoine — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:45:00 GMT

If you follow blogs of other Oslo enthusiastic, you couldn't have missed it. Oslo , the codename for Microsoft's new modeling platform, has been renamed to SQL Server Modeling. Confirms this that the focus will shift to SQL Server instead of creating a modeling platform for DSLs and storing models?

This development is however something that comes as a disappointment to me. I was hoping for improvements to Oslo which should raise the speed of creating and deploying DSLs. Something I am missing is the possibility to modify language definitions without the need to redeploy your schemes and without losing your models. This is something essential when dealing with changes in DSLs, especially during prototyping. But if Microsoft is really moving their focus to SQL, it will not surprising me if these features will never be developed.

Some other news that is also interesting, but might also be confusing, is the use of SQL Server Modeling Services as underlying application model for Microsoft's cloud, Azure.
Using DSLs to model applications running within a cloud is something that is in line with my vision for years. If you really want to stimulate people to connect their online services running within a cloud, you should make it easy for them by raising the abstraction level of application development. I believe that DSLs will be the way to make this possible, but I also see that the language workbenches currently available would have to undergo a necessary transformation. I therefore really wonder how this will fit within the direction Microsoft is taking with the SQL Server Modeling Services.

However, I'm still interested in using the SQL Server Modeling Services (Hmm, the name ' Oslo ' still sounds a lot better) as platform for sharing models. For DSL prototyping however, I will use other tools. Hopefully Microsoft will at the end choose to change the name of there moddeling platform to something like the "Azure Modeling Services" ;).

To see what other people are writing about the rename:

To read more about the name change, see this post and other blog posts of Douglas Purdy.

Questionnaire DSL at PDC09

Antoine — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:04:00 GMT

In my previous blog posts and papers I referred to my master's project. During this project I designed and build a prototype of a DSL for medical statements. My DSL is now used within Avanade Netherlands as a case study for other interns. Michael Wolbert and Bryan Sumter developed my DSL further by making a version of the DSL for Microsoft Oslo, which will be presented at the Microsoft PDC next week. Gerben van Loon wrote a blog post: "Questionnaire DSL with Microsoft "Oslo" overview" about it showing some of it's details that might be interesting to have a look at.

The master's thesis of my which is the root of this project will be hopefully made public soon.

Antoine Savelkoul : Model Driven Software Development, SQL Server Modeling Services (Oslo)

The end of 'Oslo' as a language workbench?

Questionnaire DSL at PDC09