In October 2007, Microsoft introduced “Oslo” as the codename for a set of technical investments to apply model-driven principles to building applications and services. Since that announcement, many of those investments have shipped in products such as the .NET Framework, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure AppFabric. This note is an update on the three “Oslo” investments that have yet to ship: the “Oslo” repository, “Quadrant”, and “M.”
Microsoft created the “Oslo” repository to make the model of a system or application easily accessible without relying on application-specific machinery to consume or query those models. The “Oslo” repository achieved this by storing the models for applications and systems in a shared SQL Server relational database.
Over the past year, customer feedback prefering a more loosely-coupled approach; specifically, an approach based on a common protocol and data model rather than a common store has forced MSFT to shut down Quadrant and the Repository. The momentum behind the Open Data Protocol (OData) and its underlying data model, Entity Data Model (EDM), shows that customers are acting on this preference.
With OData, Microsoft has enabled access to information across a growing number of technologies, data sources, and tools, including .NET Framework, Visual Studio, Microsoft Excel Power Pivot, SQL Server Reporting Services, SharePoint 2010, Windows Azure storage, and Codename “Dallas.”
With EDM, they have created a common abstract model for data that can be represented in multiple forms (XML-based EDMX/CSDL, C# or Visual Basic classes, visual designers, OData metadata) to simplify the creation and sharing of models.
Microsoft created a language codenamed “M” for defining schema, constraints, queries, and transformations. While they used “M” to build the “Oslo” repository and “Quadrant,” there has been significant interest both inside and outside of Microsoft in using “M” for other applications. Microsoft is continuing their investment in this technology and will share our plans for productization once they are concrete.
