Microsoft sets Oslo project for model-centric apps

Plan in which models themselves become applications is called 'ambitious' by analysts

He added that he senses Oslo is mostly focused on enabling Microsoft Dynamics applications as work as enterprise applications via a SaaS (software as a service) model.

Microsoft will need industry backing for Oslo to succeed, said analyst Nick Gall, vice president at Gartner.

"It's doubtful that it could really have the kind of major impact that I'm sure Microsoft and all of us would like to see unless they get the industry behind the approach," Gall said. Microsoft said it is evaluating whether to submit Oslo to an industry standards body and whether to seek industry-wide use of Oslo.

SOA is related to Oslo because a services piece is offered, in which tooling and integration are improved with the .Net Framework. Also, there will be better connectivity to BizTalk Services, which provides Web-based services for messaging, identity, and workflow.

Modeling, meanwhile, is important to application development, said Martin. Microsoft sees stumbling blocks with modeling as it is now: that modeling represents the application or business logic at a specific time, thus providing only a snapshot, and that models exist in isolation.

"Anytime you're looking at a model, you're only looking at a piece of the application because each of those models is separate," Martin said.

Solving these problems involves taking modeling mainstream, he said. "Today, modeling is really only something that a select group of users and a select group of companies can do," said Martin.

Whether a user is designing, developing, or deploying applications, Oslo "will simplify your job," Martin stressed.

Microsoft's approach is not about Unified Modeling Language (UML), a technology of which Microsoft has not been a big supporter. But UML is a great example of a modeling language and Microsoft wants to unify its approach to modeling in general, Martin said.

A modeling language is part of Oslo, but Microsoft is building a modeling language, a set of tools, and a unified repository. Microsoft's modeling language provides a way to unify existing modeling languages, similar to Microsoft's Common Language Runtime for application development.

Oslo expands beyond UML to cover deployment and management, which UML does not address, Pezzini said.

Key to Microsoft's effort is a unified metadata repository. Users get a view of a model being pulled out of this repository, Martin said. Deployment and policy information, workflow, and rules are maintained in one location, to prevent loss of data useful when deploying and managing an application or writing business rules against it.

"We think this will allow a much broader set of users to collaborate on applications," Martin said. "We think the process of building applications will be more efficient when anybody can see the application holistically."

If Microsoft is successful with its plan to have application components automatically deployed based on models in the repository, it will be "a very huge benefit for the IT operations," said Pezzini.

Microsoft is making available tools and guidance to take advantage of "real-world SOA." Featured are SOA resources from Microsoft and industry partners. Meanwhile, the new Microsoft SOA and Business Process Solution Center offers resources such as patterns and practices based on customer implementations.