Microsoft makes 'M' interoperable with OMG-compliant software

By David Worthington

December 3, 2008 — (Page 1 of 3)
Microsoft may appear to have taken a proprietary path with the creation of its M modeling language, but in reality M will be interoperable with the Object Management Group’s specification for domain-specific languages, the company says.

M is a low-level XML-based language that is designed to let developers use domain-specific languages (DSLs). It is a core technology of Microsoft’s Oslo initiative for model-driven development within Visual Studio. M is interoperable with OMG’s Unified Modeling Language (UML), a standardized, general purpose modeling language.

Microsoft has made M available under its Open Specification Promise, an irrevocable commitment by Microsoft not to assert its intellectual property rights for covered technologies.

The company joined OMG as a contributing member in September. It endorsed UML as part of the move, but it did not adopt OMG’s MetaObject Facility (MOF) specification for defining domain-specific languages.

Steve Cook, principal architect of Visual Studio Team 2008 System Architecture Edition, acknowledged Microsoft’s decision not to conform to the MOF standard but added that M does not constitute the full extent of its modeling technologies. Microsoft’s UML implementation and DSL tools, which are included in the Architecture Edition, are not based on M, and they support metadata exchange between models in the same way that MOF does, Cook said.

Microsoft is also in the process of aligning its DSL tools with M, he added. Until recently, M was on a separate track and life cycle.

“The core value of MOF is the way that it defines the XMI [XML Metadata Interchange] model interchange language,” he said. “Our tools will support XMI interchange in the way that MOF does.”

In doing so, Microsoft would be providing for interoperability, said OMG chairman and CEO Richard Mark Soley. “That would mean [Microsoft’s] tool can output models that can be read by any other compliant tool, and vice versa, as long as it’s MOF-compliant XMI.

“We never intended for UML to be the be-all and end-all,” Soley added. “Microsoft has its own mechanism [for defining DSLs], and [that mechanism] is not conformant to the MOF standard. It does not have to be, because they are supporting UML also and use the UML profile in their tool.”

Related Search Term(s): modeling, UML, XML, IBM, Microsoft, OMG

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Just as interesting as looking at the year just passed it to look back a decade and see which stories were top of mind then Read More...