Oslo architecture: two slides from PDC

Source: A Lap around “Oslo” by Vijaye Raji and Douglas Purdy

PDC 2008: WF and Oslo Resources

• TL17: WF 4.0: A First Look, Kenny Wolf
  • Slides
  • Video
• TL23: A Lap around “Oslo”, Douglas Purdy, Vijaye Raji
  • Slides
  • Video
• TL27: “Oslo”: The Language, Don Box, David Langworthy
  • Slides
  • Video
  • C9 Bytes: Don and Chris explain Oslo in 5 minutes
• TL06: WCF 4.0: Building WCF Services with WF in Microsoft .NET 4.0, Ed Pinto
  • Video
  • Slides
• TL18: “Oslo”: Customizing and Extending the Visual Design Experience, Don Box, Florian Voss
  • Video
  • Slides
• TL28: “Oslo”: Repository and Models, Chris Sells
  • Slides
  • Video
• BB18: “Dublin”: Hosting and Managing Workflows and Services in Windows Application Server, Dan Eshner
  • Video
  • Slides
• TL21: WF 4.0: Extending with Custom Activities, Matt Winkler
  • Video
  • Slides
• TL36: Microsoft .NET Framework: Declarative Programming Using XAML, Rob Relyea, Daniel Roth
  • Video
  • Slides
• BB47: SharePoint 2007: Advanced Asynchronous Workflow Messaging, Alex Malek
  • Video
  • Slides
• BB27: .NET Services: Orchestrating Services and Business Processes Using Cloud-Based Workflow, Moustafa Ahmed
  • Video
  • Slides
• TL31: “Oslo”: Building Textual DSLs, Chris Anderson, Giovanni Della-Libera 
  • Video
  • Slides
  • Don Box, Paul Vick and Chris Anderson: Introducing M

Combining WF 4.0, “Dublin”, and “Oslo”: A figure

An application can use workflows, services, and models together, combining WF 4.0, “Dublin”, and “Oslo”

Source: Workflows, Services, and Models

What is “Oslo?”

Source: Chris Sells, http://www.sellsbrothers.com/news/showTopic.aspx?ixTopic=2196

What is “Oslo?”

And to kick this conversation off, we’d like to provide the 10,000 foot introduction to “Oslo”. “Oslo” is the code name for our platform for model-driven applications. The goal of “Oslo” is to provide a 10x productivity gain by making model-driven applications mainstream. At the core of this platform are domain-specific models, language and tools:

• A language, M, for authoring domains textually
• A tool, Quadrant, for authoring domains visually
• A Repository for managing domain models
• A library of pre-built domain models and languages

Together, these components will make it more efficient for a team to develop, implement, and maintain applications and services.

What is “M”?

“M” is a new declarative language that provides developers with an approachable, textual format for authoring models and DSLs for those models. The “M” language consists of three parts: MGraph, MSchema and MGrammar. MGraph is used to write down values in a graph structure similar to syntaxes like JSON. MSchema builds on MGraph by providing a structural type system, extent declarations for storing values, and computed values, which are queries over values and extents. MGrammar is used to describe a domain-specific language in terms of token and syntax rules, which are then used to parse text into an MGraph.

What is “Quadrant”?

 Quadrant is a real-time editor over a SQL database. Updates in Quadrant are automatically propagated to the database. Views over the same data are automatically refreshed when those data changes are made to the database. This is technically possible because Quadrant is built on an innovative dataflow technology. Quadrant’s user experience is reflective of the experience in Office tools.

Quadrant is available to PDC attendees on the VPC, but not yet available for download. We hope to get Quadrant into a future Oslo CTP soon!

What is the Repository?

The “Oslo” repository delivers a platform to manage application metadata. The “Oslo” repository provides a common set of features to enable data-driven applications to leverage a platform investment made by Microsoft.

The “Oslo” repository builds naturally upon the SQL Server database and provides optimizations for storing and sharing models – by providing a thin layer on top of the existing DBMS engine, this enables customers to easily leverage the existing SQL Server database ecosystem (e.g. tools, reporting, BI, etc). The repository is designed for extensibility, and supports common tasks such as impact analysis and access control. The repository manages end-to-end system models across the lifecycle, including support for both design and run-time views of application metadata. Pre-built models will be delivered as a starting point for building your full application, and with extensibility points so that your models can be augmented as needed.

Articles on Oslo

• Workflows, Services, and Models: A First Look at WF 4.0, “Dublin”, and “Oslo”, David Chappell:The focus is on three things: workflows, services, and models. Accordingly, this set of forthcoming technologies has three main aspects: (a) a new and expanded version of Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), a .NE, (b) extensions to the Windows Server application server, codenamed “Dublin“, that provide improved server support and (c) a group of technologies, codenamed “Oslo“, aimed at creating and running model-driven applications.
• MGrammar in a Nutshell: Provides a high level introduction to MGrammar, a language for writing textual, domain-specific languages. This document begins by covering the basics of grammar development using MGrammar before diving into specific features for input and output processing, and programming against compiled grammars. There is also coverage of modularity, and advanced grammar techniques, including parameterization and recursion.
• Microsoft.Business.BPMN: This module defines the data types, relationships, and constraints that together support an implementation that closely aligns with Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) 1.1 in the Microsoft code name “Quadrant“.
• System.WorkflowModel and System.WorkflowServiceModel: Describes the data types, relationships, and constraints that together represent the functionality of the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) as implemented in the .NET Framework.
• Martin Fowler on Oslo

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• Oslo Developer Center: “Oslo” is the code name for our platform for model-driven applications. The goal of “Oslo” is to provide a 10x productivity gain by making model-driven applications mainstream with domain-specific models, a new language and tools.
• MSDN Microsoft Modeling Platform (code named “Oslo”): The Microsoft “Oslo” platform is a set of technical investments that aim to significantly simplify designing, building, managing and scaling service-oriented and composite applications that can span from the enterprise to the Internet.

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• Best PDC session so far : Lap around “Oslo” by Dennis van der Stelt
• Oslo, WCF, WF & Dublin PDC Bits Review by Alan Smith

October 2008 Links & Downloads

Links

• Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) REST Starter Kit: a set of features, Visual Studio templates, samples and guidance that enable users to create REST style services using WCF.
• Microsoft® .NET Workflow Service: This document describes the APIs in the Microsoft.Workflow.Activities namespace, which contains the cloud-based workflow activities and the workflow client side APIs.
• Azure Services Platform: Build new applications in the cloud – or use interoperable services that run on Microsoft infrastructure to extend and enhance your existing applications.
• Cloud Computing Tools Team: Cloud Computing Tools Team blog
• http://modelsremixed.com/
• patterns & practices Application Architecture Guide – v2.0 (Beta 1 Release): provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework.

Downloads

• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio October 2008 CTP: extend Visual Studio to enable the creation, building, debugging, running and packaging of scalable services on Windows Azure.
• Windows® Azure™ Software Development Kit (October 2008 CTP): provides developers with the APIs, tools, documentation, and samples needed to develop Internet-scale applications that run on Windows Azure.
• Microsoft Pre-release Software Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0 Community Technology Preview (CTP): This CTP release is available in English only as a Virtual PC image. The CTP is designed to enable users to experience Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4.0, and to provide feature design feedback on a limited set of features. These features are exposed through a set of walkthroughs that are included in the VPC itself. Many common development scenarios may not work in this CTP as it is designed to support the above walkthroughs.
• Oslo SDK October 2008 CTP: The Oslo SDK includes documents and tools for working with the M language.
• SQL Data Services (SDS) SDK (CTP): This community technology preview (CTP) release of the Software Development Kit for SDS includes tools and client side components useful to developers building applications with SDS.
• .NET Services SDK: Microsoft .NET Services are a set of Microsoft-hosted, highly scalable, developer-oriented services that provide key building blocks required by many cloud-based and cloud-aware applications. Much like the .NET Framework provides higher-level class libraries that make developers more productive, Microsoft .NET Services enables a developer to focus on their application logic rather than building and deploying their own cloud-based infrastructure services.
• Azure Services Training Kit – PDC Preview: The Azure Services Training Kit will include a comprehensive set of technical content including samples, demos, hands-on labs, and presentations that are designed to help you learn how to use the Azure Services Platform. This initial PDC Preview release includes the hands-on labs that were provided at the PDC 2008 conference. These labs cover the broad set of Azure Services including Windows Azure, .NET Services, SQL Services, and Live Services.