Hot on the heels of one CTP (StreamInsight) and timed to coincide with the opening day of the PDC, Microsoft has just released the latest version of the technology formally known as ‘Oslo’. SQL Server Modelling, as we must now learn to call it, has several improvements over the previous CTP release last May. Indeed, the previous CTP was characterised by behind-the-scenes code improvements and rewrites rather than new functionality. It is therefore doubly reassuring to see the slew of new features.
I won’t spend time going into new functionality here because Kraig Brockschmidt (yes, forall you ‘techie’s of a certain age’…this is the same Kraig B of ‘Inside OLE’ fame – every COM developer’s bible circa 1995)has just posted an excellent summary at http://blogs.msdn.com/modelcitizen/archive/2009/11/17/announcing-the-sql-server-modeling-n-e-oslo-ctp-for-november-2009.aspxtogether with links to the download and various materials. In any case, it’s getting late here and I need to go to bed. However, things are moving along. I’m looking forward to getting to grips with Quadrant which sounds like it may, at last, be beginning to make some sense.M improvements sound great.
Like others, I was deeply alarmed by Doug Purdy’s post (see http://www.douglaspurdy.com/2009/11/10/from-oslo-to-sql-server-modeling/) aweek ago, and my initial reaction was similar to many commentators (something along the lines of deep groans, punctuated by loudinarticulate screams). We must hope that the new name and product alignment, which appears at so many levels to indicate an abandonment of the deep platform vision many of us believed ‘Oslo’ represented, is just a temporary glitch in Microsoft’s modelling story. SQL Server may be a platform. Most of us think of it as a product. Windows is the platform, and we want Microsoft to do better at supporting modelling across their entire platform, and not just one, admittedly very powerful, corner of their universe <end of rant>