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'Oslo' Takes Model-Driven Development Mainstream


Microsoft will deliver new technologies for composite applications

By David Worthington
October 30, 2007 — 
Microsoft today took the wraps off a model-driven development initiative called "Oslo" that will be a multiyear, multiproduct effort to develop new technology for customers to build, deploy, design and manage composite applications.

The technical investments from Oslo will be incorporated into the next generation of its application platform. The road map has five key components: BizTalk Server release 6, BizTalk Services release 1, .NET Framework version 4, Microsoft System Center release 5 and Visual Studio release 10—all of these names being provisional.

Burley Kawasaki, director of the connected systems division at Microsoft, explained that although composite applications and service-oriented architectures help breach boundaries across technologies by increasing agility and flexibility, the broader problem, human productivity, is not being addressed. Microsoft, he said, will create application development techniques that address the limitations of current approaches and turn the model into the application.

“Our vision is to make modeling a mainstream part of application development. We will provide the language, repository and tools to bridge disparate models,” Kawasaki said. He discussed what Microsoft views as the two fundamental limitations of current approaches to modeling: first, application models get out of sync with the application itself as it changes down the life cycle; and second, users lack a unified view.

“Everyone sees fragments, only the slice of the model that they think is important to them,” Kawasaki explained. Microsoft System Center release 5 will provide a repository for both business users and developers to collaborate across rolls and view the same version of the mode at the same time.

When asked what role SharePoint might play, Kawasaki noted that it was an important part of the company’s application platform and that Microsoft was determining use scenarios.

Models are written in the developer’s language of choice, and are converted into the .NET intermediary language MSIL (Microsoft Intermediate Language) for interoperability, Kawasaki said. “[Developers] work with what they know.” Microsoft will work with its Microsoft Business Process Alliance partners to integrate models and runtimes into Visual Studio.

Kawasaki added that Oslo would be a strong inflection point for Microsoft—drawing a parallel with 1991, when it first released Visual Basic. Modeling, he said, will permit business users to participate in the development process and help developers work more closely with them.

The Visual Studio 10 user interface will also have facilities for users to assemble composite applications using drag-and-drop techniques, he said. “It’s like a mashup but broader and more mainstream, and is easy for someone in business to understand.” Microsoft has already begun to use this modeling paradigm for its own development efforts.

Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst Nicholas Gall remarked that Oslo is an ambitious attempt to get model-driven development right. “It’s been tried many times before and come up far short,” he said, citing the CASE modeling methodology and the Object Management Group’s Model Driven Architecture effort as examples that, in his words, “fell short of expectations and enthusiasm.”

Gall described Microsoft’s efforts as more than a push towards managed code; the goal is to create an interoperable and portable architecture. “[Microsoft] can map their models to any kind of code such as Java or SAP code. Although as usual, I am sure that .NET and other Microsoft assets will get the first-class treatment; whereas other code environments will be done in a more opportunistic manner.”

Gall likened Microsoft’s approach to modeling to its push for Web standards in the form of the WS-* family of specifications. “If WS-* were an attempt toward universal interoperability, Oslo is an attempt toward universal portability. It completes the overall vision.”

He noted that Oslo’s modeling initiative would need industry support behind it in order to succeed over time.

Oslo Spans Across the Platform
Project Oslo will contribute updated messaging and workflow technologies for the sixth release of BizTalk Server, the fifth having shipped in early October as Biz Talk Server 2006 R2. Release 6 will ship a new messaging infrastructure built on the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Messaging API and will include the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF). Directions on Microsoft analyst Rob Helm said that BizTalk is the major vehicle for Oslo technology.

Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division has developed technologies adapters for business applications as well as publish-and-subscribe routing, a method to simplify how composite applications communicate over the Web. BizTalk Services offer a hosted version of WCF and WF, in addition to identity management.

At present, Microsoft distributes a toolkit for adapter technology, the Line of Business Adapter SDK, and beta releases of its own adapters in the BizTalk Adapter Pack. Adapters are available for mySAP ERP, Oracle Database and Siebel CRM business applications.

The upcoming .NET release will enable model-driven development with WCW and WF. Another part of the Oslo initiative is an effort to align the metadata repositories cross the server and tools product sets. Microsoft System Center “release 5” will be central to that effort.

Microsoft will begin releases betas of its application platform in 2008, but does not expect to have deliverables until 2009, and Kawasaki said that it would ultimately decide when to release to manufacturing based on customer feedback.


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