When I blogged about the .NET Framework 4.0/Dublin announcement recently, I also mentioned that the code name “Oslo” has taken on a refined meaning. Since then, I’ve seen some confusion out there, and thought I would do a post that specifically addresses just this change.
First off, the vision of what this new wave of technologies has not changed. The term “Oslo” used to refer to the entire technology stack that will make it so much easier to develop applications. Now, as we move through the development lifecycle, some items are migrating, quite naturally, into their ultimate ship vehicles. Some examples of things that were once under the “Oslo” umbrella, but have since migrated, include:
- WCF/WF enhancements (part of the .NET 4.0 framework)
- The runtime hosts for WCF/WF and models (part of the Windows Server application server, will be shipped as part of “Dublin” and beyond)
- Improved WCF/WF design/authoring experience (now part of Visual Studio 2010)
A nice side effect of all this is that the separate pieces are now decoupled from each other. There will be no “Big Bang Release” that will appear one day, the decoupled pieces can be delivered independent of each other. However, as all of this work is being done by Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division, everybody’s is talking to each other, and the end-goal remains the same.
So, with those things out from under Oslo, what is Oslo? Oslo today is now the modeling platform, which consists of three things:
- the repository
- the modeling language
- tooling (to author/deploy models)
Hopefully this helps to clear up some confusion.
Another name change from last week… if you’ve been following the work at labs.biztalk.net, which has been live for over a year, well…. that was the incubation project, it morphed into Zurich, and was re-unveiled last week as .NET Services. It consists of an identity system, a service bus and a workflow engine. I looked at this some months back, and my experience at the time was it took about an hour from the time I downloaded the SDK until I had my first customized workflow running in the cloud. It was a defining moment for me, and my mind started reeling, when I sat back and let the potential implications of what I had done sink in. With a few quick browser clicks, I had a workflow running in the cloud. A few years down the road, it would just take a credit card number to scale that and have it running on hundreds of machines…. Intrigued? Check it out, you can sign up for an early preview.
Another name change from last week, the poorly kept secret code name of “D” for the modeling language in Oslo is no more, it’s now “M” (for models), as well as the related MGrammar for creating DSLs. I’ll have much more to say about these soon….
Yet another name change – sort of… if you follow my blog you know I really like Live Mesh and use it a lot (see: Adventures with Live Mesh (CTP), More cool tricks with Live Mesh). Live Mesh is now integrated into the Live Services part of the Azure Services Platform. They also moved from CTP to Beta stage last week, and the geeky-cool part of the new release is Windows Mobile support. I take a picture with my phone, and it automagically appears in the “mobile photos” folder of my Live Mesh desktop-in-the-cloud, as well as any other devices that are synchronizing that folder.