Keith Short's Blog

Codename “Oslo” Repository Becomes SQL Server Modeling Services

Keith Short — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:33:00 GMT

At last week’s PDC, the new name for our repository and modeling project was announced – we are the SQL Server Modeling Services! James Baker and Shoshanna Budzianowski did an awesome job of describing the Modeling Services database and how to get value...(read more)

What happened to the Service Model?

Keith Short — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:17:00 GMT

I just looked at Mikael Håkansson’s blog article on building a Web Service Model using M and the Oslo Repository ( http://blogical.se/blogs/mikael/default.aspx ) It’s a very nice article. As Mikael observes, the Service Model we shipped in January was...(read more)

Oslo and UML

Keith Short — Wed, 27 May 2009 00:10:00 GMT

It’s been a while since my last posting. Why? The truth is quite simple – about five months ago I became involved in a small team building some specific content for our Oslo repository. This team was working using Scrum techniques with two week milestones....(read more)

Oslo Makes the Top Ten

Keith Short — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:29:00 GMT

We’re just getting back into the swing of things after a couple of weeks break over the Christmas holidays, not to mention the disruption of unusually heavy snow followed by floods here in the Seattle area. Two articles caught my attention this week....(read more)

Oslo and Software Factories

Keith Short — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 22:19:00 GMT

I’ve had a few people ask me about the connection between the Microsoft Software Factories initiative and Oslo. First, the SF initiative is alive and well and a good summary of the current state appears here . I just had a demo from Jack Greenfield’s...(read more)

Comments on Communication Between Doug Purdy and Lars Corneliussen

Keith Short — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 22:37:00 GMT

Doug has published a response to an Open Letter addressed to him from Lars Corneliussen. I think Doug did a good job in addressing Lars’ concerns, and where not, to invite discussion. I wanted to add a couple of comments of my own.

First: terminology connected with modeling, code generation and runtimes. Given my background in various modeling efforts at Microsoft over the last ten years, I know of the difficulty in seeming to redefine established terms. We faced a lot of the same concerns when, in 2004, we tried to help people understand the subtle distinctions between modeling with DSLs and using UML. As history showed, in many cases we were not very successful then, though these days (see several entries on Steve Cook’s blog especially this one and this paper from Andrew Watson, Technical Director at the OMG), most people are willing to see how both approaches may combine to bring benefits to developers across the lifecycle.

I for one have been using the term “model-driven software development” (or just “model-driven development” for short) for a number of years (actually going back to my pre-Microsoft years at Texas Instruments during the era of CASE tools). When Jack and I wrote the Software Factories book, we used the term model-driven development to encompass both “model-assisted” and “model-driven” as Doug uses those terms. We saw then, and still do today, that MDSD could involve models that transform to other models, which transform to code and which just “complete frameworks” by transforming into whatever is necessary (including no transformation) to drive a framework at runtime. For example, if I use a transform to build a logical data model, several workflows, and some service descriptions from a set of business process models, I think I’m doing more than just drawing, and I may be doing some code generation and model generation. Which of the three terms best describes this activity?

As I explained in my previous blog entry concerning the DSL Toolkit and Oslo, we are trying to help folks understand the specifics of Oslo in its first incarnation, with respect to pre-existing technologies from Visual Studio (and other parts of Microsoft). This leads us to seek terminology that helps us conduct that discussion, and in cases such as this, involves some subtle distinctions that are tough to differentiate. As Doug says: “when you a birth a new product, naming/terminology is often the most difficult aspect of the process”.

Second: Open Microsoft and Eclipse Modeling Project. I second Doug’s remarks wholeheartedly. I’d especially like to see discussion on relationships between EMF and oAW technologies.

Oslo and the DSL Toolkit

Keith Short — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 01:30:00 GMT

I’ve received a number of questions concerning the relationship of Oslo to the Visual Studio DSL Toolkit. Comments have varied from the sublime (see David Ing’s comment on his blog “My best guess is that the DSL Toolkit is research road kill in front of the big Oslo truck and that VSTS Architecture Edition was just about a necessary cycle too early”) to the ridiculous. Since I’ve been a founder member of both projects, I thought I’d try to start the discussion with a few comments of my own.

Firstly, it’s true that the two efforts are built on different technology stacks – the DSL Toolkit works on file-based artifacts (schemas, model instances, etc.) and produces graphical and forms-based tools that run as add-ins to Visual Studio – dramatically simplifying the task of creating tools hosted via VS extensibility.

On the other hand, Oslo is based on an underlying SQL database. Quadrant depends on the underlying database for both the data it is processing and its own configuration data. In other words, Quadrant’s equivalent of the DSL Tools’ domain modeling language and the shape and shape mapping languages is MSchema. Concrete textual languages are of course defined in MGrammar.

Despite these differences, two things need to be made really clear:

1. Both the Oslo and the DSL Toolkit have grown from a common belief in the role DSLs can play in the development lifecycle. Not just during development, but DSLs that help record Business Objectives, Business Processes and Entities, System Architectures, Software components and connections, Deployment Information, Data Center Configuration, and System Management to name just some of the lifecycle stages. This is a shared vision, well documented elsewhere, though each project has focused on a different aspect initially. The DSL Toolkit builds great graphical (box and line) tools that run in Visual Studio and may be translated into code-based artifacts. Oslo is focused on textual and graphical developer experiences around models that initially represent code and configuration that “completes” the underlying frameworks that are part of the application platform – in other words – models that are mostly executable by the underlying servers and frameworks (e.g. WF, WCF, and Identity Services).

2. Both products have a lifecycle in front of them. The two teams, already aligned around vision, are working together to bridge differences over releases. Would it have been nice to have gone dark for a period while we resolved these technology stack issues and re-emerged with a fully aligned set of technologies? You bet – but such a strategy rarely ends with the right thing being built for customers. Ideas we are tossing around include (a) storing DSL Toolkit artifacts (including those created with the emerging UML tools from VSTA) in the Oslo Repository, (b) using MSchema as the domain language for the DSL Toolkit, and (c) converging on a single way to specify concrete DSL syntax whether it is graphical or textual. Sadly, I can’t give dates at this point.

Stuart Kent is the architect for DSL Tools. If you take a look at Stuart’s blog, you’ll find the latest blog entry where he responds to the same questions from his point of view.

Oslo at the PDC

Keith Short — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:13:00 GMT

The PDC is now over and by all measures has been a great success. The Oslo talks have been received with great enthusiasm. Any one not following the activity on our MSDN forum who missed the sessions might want to look at this entry on the forum that summarizes the links to our various sessions.

Also, the main Oslo site is now active at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/oslo/default.aspx and of course don’t miss the fun video at the site http://modelsremixed.com .

Yet Another Promise to Start Blogging !!

Keith Short — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 02:10:00 GMT

Yet again, it’s been a long time since I wrote to my blog. This posting is my restart.

I know, you just have to look at the last posting of over two years ago to realize I’ve said that before!

But here’s what happened. Shortly after writing that last posting, I moved from Visual Studio to join the group that was working on the earliest ideas that have now become known by the codeword “Oslo”. Obviously we couldn’t talk about this work, but now, at last, we are about to make the project public in a *big* way at next week’s PDC. You just have to look at blogs such as Don Box’s or Doug Purdy’s to realize “Oslo” is Microsoft’s modeling platform consisting of a new language for describing models and DSLs, a database in which to store models of various kinds, and a new tool to view and edit them.

I’ve mostly been working on the design of the model store (a SQL Server database) and using the new language to create schemas for the new store, but I’ve been able to bring a long background in model driven development, software factories and DSL tools to help with the design and testing of the language and tool.

For me this is very exciting since the “Oslo” investment represents a serious commitment from Microsoft to change the game and make modeling mainstream. That’s almost been the story of my life!

Once the excitement over the various announcements that will be made at the PDC subsides, I’ll try to give more background from my perspective, and begin the task of helping folks understand exactly what we are doing in this space.

Recent Postings by Enterprise Tools Architects

Keith Short — Sat, 07 Jan 2006 01:17:00 GMT

I’ve been lax with my blog for the last two months. I plan to do better this year! During the last two months, we have of course shipped Visual Studio 2005 so our modeling tools for developers and architects finally are in the hands of customers. This has been very exciting!

There are a couple of recent postings by architects in the team that I wanted to advertise.

Firstly, Bill Gibson, a long time colleague of mine both at Microsoft and before, has written a set of Technical Notes which I think offer invaluable advice to users of our tools in Visual Studio Team System 2005 edition for Architects. Among other helpful insights, Bill describes ways to use the tools that many users will find helpful. You can find these indexed on Bill’s blog here.

Also, in response to a question posed by Tad Anderson about our DSL strategy, VSTS and Software Architecture (posting is here), Jack Greenfield wrote a great summary of our Software Factories approach that is embellished with several up-to-date links to various podcasts, papers and other references. I can definitely recommend reading Jack’s posting here.

Software Factories at OOPSLA 2005

Keith Short — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 01:24:00 GMT

OOPSLA 2005 in San Diego was a fun event. It was great to chat with lots of old friends and sit in on some interesting sessions and panels. Our team was represented at a number of events. Jack Greenfield and Steve Cook presented a one day tutorial on Software Factories using some updated material from last year, and showed a fewof interesting demos. One, given by Mauro Regio, showed Visual Studio 2005 configured with various assets to help developers build collaborating services based on the HL7 (a set of standards for B2B communication in the Health Services Industry) software factory I talked about in a previous post which you can read about here. Steve also demoed the latest builds of the DSL Tools.

Also, we attended the Software Factories Workshop, a one-day event which Jack chaired. This was voted a great success by those who attended and gave us all a chance to drill into a bunch of interesting topics around model-driven development, DSLs and software factories. The papers which were reviewed and accepted by the review committee may be read here, but will be published in some form, yet to be decided, as soon as possible along with the proceedings of the workshop. I'll point to those proceedings when they're ready.

Windows Workflow Foundation

Keith Short — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 19:51:00 GMT

After the announcement last week of this great piece of technology, we can finally all start to talk about it. Although you can code directly against the WWF, it contains a nice example of a couple of graphical DSLs that allow the developer to declaratively describe workflows consisting of human and system activities. The lead architect for WWF, Dave Green, has started a blog here, but you'll also want to check out a great article written by David Chappell published on MSDN here.

Steve Cook Interview

Keith Short — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 01:35:00 GMT

Back off three weeks vacation always causes severe "re-entry" problems! But digging myself out of the email stack I noticed Steve Cook has posted a very good interview with Roy Osherove on Software Factories and DSLs. You can download the interview as an MP3 from here.

Steve explains, among other things, the relationship between the DSL Toolkit and the Guidance Automation Toolkit, both of which can be downloaded from the MSDNCommunity Technology Preview site for Visaul Studio Team System.

Software Factories & DSLs

Keith Short — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 00:37:00 GMT

A couple of interesting items have appeared recently that will be of interest to folks following our stories on Software Factories and DSL’s. I had posted earlier some examples of Software Factories that generated quite a bit of comment from readers. We have had a team of people working on a specification for implementing business-to-business interactions under HL7 (Health Level 7) – a set of standards for B2B communications in the Health industry. Since building these kinds of systems uses common design patterns, common tooling, and the implementations share a common architecture across a diverse range of applications and scenarios, they are ideally suited to a Software Factory approach. You can read about this on MSDN here.

Renowned author and industry leader Martin Fowler has published an excellent set of papers describing the use of DSLs in the development process. The starting point is a paper entitled “Language Workbenches: The Killer Application for Domain Specific Languages”.

I thoroughly recommend the article.

Microsoft's Modeling Strategy

Keith Short — Fri, 27 May 2005 22:33:00 GMT

My team has written a document that explains Microsoft’s Modeling Strategy and addresses a number of FAQ’s we get from customers and partners. The outline is:

Why Modeling?
How Are DSLs Used in Model-Driven Development?
What About UML?
What About MDA?
What Are Software Factories?
Other Frequently Asked Questions

Astute readers of my blog may even recognize parts of this document that have appeared in earlier postings. That’s a great value to us of blogs – getting feedback on how we communicate products and strategies so we can improve our ideas. We’d love to get feedback on this document too.

Steve Cook posted these links too, but I do not suffer the same anguish that he does over British/American spelling. I guess I’ve lived in the USA for too long now to continue worrying about that, and happily type ‘z’s instead of ‘s’s with hardly a thought.