Douglas Purdy

What is Oslo?

with 48 comments

On October 27, my team will begin to unveil “Oslo” at PDC. 

As part of that effort, I will present A Lap around Oslo which drills into the technical details of Oslo and demonstrates the power that this technology will provide our customers.

I will co-present with the Super Ninja.  His actual name is Vijaye Raji, but we call him Super Ninja as he is one of the best developers in the company.  He is also one of the lead engineers on what has been called Emacs.Net.

Over the past few months, as we prepared for PDC, we honed our bits and messaging for Oslo to a fine point.  We take a good deal of inspiration from Antoine de Saint Exupéry in this regard (“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”).

To that end, we have boiled down Oslo to three very simple things:

  • A tool that helps people define and interact with models in a rich and visual manner
  • A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data models
  • A relational repository that makes models available to both tools and platform components

That is it.  That is all Oslo is.  Oslo is just the modeling platform.

As simple as that story is, the impact of this platform on software development and management will be transformational, which we intend to demonstrate.

Having me and others show some demos is one thing (there are lies, damn lies, and demos), but we want to make Oslo real for our customers and get their feedback.  As such, we intend to release a public CTP of our SDK that will provide you the opportunity to experience Oslo directly.

For me personally, Oslo is the first step in my vision “to make everyone a programmer (even if they don’t know it)”.

I am proud of the work that we have done on it to date and look forward to showing it, but it is just the “end of the beginning”.

See you in LA.

September 6th, 2008 at 8:31 pm

Posted in Microsoft

« PDC prep
He who defines the language… »

48 Responses to 'What is Oslo?'

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  1. [...] directly, and it just so happens that Doug Purdy, Product Unit Manager for Oslo, has a summary of what Oslo is and what people should expect to learn more about at the PDC. He writes the following: [W]e have [...]

    Oslo- a Biztalk replacement, next generation services bus, BPM platform or all of the above? « Randy Holloway Unfiltered

    6 Sep 08 at 23:34

  2. [...] quite happy to finally be able to give people early bits next month at PDC – as Doug says PDC is the “end of the beginning” and the real journey starts then. Posted Sep 06 2008, 04:33 PM by [...]

    Oslo - Don Box's Spoutlet - Pluralsight Blogs

    7 Sep 08 at 00:35

  3. [...] title has a lot of excitement as well as a bit of fear. Don, Doug and Kavitak unveil their mission!!! At this stage all I know is PDC 2008 is going to be fun! :) [...]

    Oslo - Making everyone a programmer... - Geeks Diary

    7 Sep 08 at 06:57

  4. “For me personally, Oslo is the first step in my vision “to make everyone a programmer (even if they don’t know it)”.”

    That’s why I love WS-BPEL and WS-HT and BPEL4People. You can reach out, touch and feel the software.

    Casper

    7 Sep 08 at 16:11

  5. [...] Douglas Purdy [...]

    Development in a Blink » Blog Archive » Next on the ToDo List

    7 Sep 08 at 16:52

  6. [...] from Microsoft that helps teams quickly create unmaintainable code, but I saw this little line in Doug Purdy's post on Oslo:A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data modelsNow [...]

    Microsoft doing Language Oriented Programming with Oslo? Are they serious about it, or just taunting me? - Jeremy D. Miller -- The Shade Tree Developer

    7 Sep 08 at 23:12

  7. [...] night there was posts from Doug Purdy and Don Box that began to unveil bits of what make [...]

    Kang The Koder » What is Oslo?

    7 Sep 08 at 23:36

  8. [...] from Microsoft that helps teams quickly create unmaintainable code, but I saw this little line in Doug Purdy's post on Oslo:A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data modelsNow [...]

    Microsoft doing Language Oriented Programming with Oslo? Are they serious about it, or just taunting me? - Mirrored Blogs

    7 Sep 08 at 23:55

  9. [...] you may have already read on Doug’s or Don’s blogs, “Oslo” is the codename for the new Microsoft Modeling platform. [...]

    Shy Cohen's WebLog : Oslo and Models

    8 Sep 08 at 08:34

  10. [...] Purdy: we have boiled down Oslo to three very simple things: [...]

    Tim Anderson’s ITWriting - Tech writing blog » Microsoft Oslo: a tool, a language, a repository

    8 Sep 08 at 09:17

  11. [...] Doug Purdy – "What is Oslo?" [...]

    André Henriksson : Ett verktyg, ett språk, ett lagringsställe - Nu kommer "Oslo"!

    8 Sep 08 at 12:17

  12. 철수의 생각…

    코드명 Oslo는 모델링을 위한 플랫폼. PDC에서 수년만에 공개될 Oslo는 모델기반 소프트웨어 개발로 가는 길….

    charlz' me2DAY

    8 Sep 08 at 15:34

  13. [...] As expected Microsoft bloggers begin to leak Oslo information prior to the PDC; here, here, here and here. Only problem is that I suspect we’ll have to wait for VS10 before we seen anything [...]

    Oslo Leakage « Tales from a Trading Desk

    8 Sep 08 at 21:30

  14. [...] http://douglaspurdy.com/2008/09/06/what-is-oslo/ [...]

    System.Blog.Martens.Ben : Oslo Elevator Pitch

    9 Sep 08 at 00:15

  15. [...] yet?  If not, be sure to check out Oliver Sharp's announcement, as well as posts by Doug Purdy and Don Box.  As always, you can stay up to speed with happenings in the world of BizTalk by [...]

    News & Announcements : BizTalk 2009 and Area Events

    9 Sep 08 at 01:38

  16. [...] “What is Oslo?“, by Douglas Purdy. « User authentication and Silverlight [...]

    Microsoft Oslo: a Tool, a Language and a Repository to simplify the software development | DavideZordan.net

    9 Sep 08 at 09:34

  17. Ca bine le mai zici

    Animalici

    9 Sep 08 at 12:35

  18. [...] from Microsoft that helps teams quickly create unmaintainable code, but I saw this little line in Doug Purdy's post on Oslo: A language that helps people create and use textual domain-specific languages and data [...]

    Microsoft doing Language Oriented Programming with Oslo? Are they serious about it, or just taunting me? - taccato! trend tracker, cool hunting, new business ideas

    9 Sep 08 at 16:30

  19. Pingback from Dependnet.ro

    Bogdan Nedelcu

    9 Sep 08 at 19:58

  20. [...] Chappell recorded a video about it last month. More recently Doug Purdy and Don Box each posted a short description of Oslo. Don describes the goal of Oslo as [...]

    William Vambenepe’s blog » Blog Archive » Oslo, blog posts and my crystal ball

    10 Sep 08 at 16:41

  21. [...] Douglas Purdy -What is Oslo? [...]

    WMOC#19 - More Oslo! - Service Endpoint

    12 Sep 08 at 03:09

  22. [...] Official page, Douglas Purdy – "What is Oslo?", Don Box blog, Various MS SOA articles (incl. non Oslo [...]

    Cool upcoming .NET stuff from Microsoft | Veggerby : IBlog

    13 Sep 08 at 14:08

  23. “to make everyone a programmer (even if they don’t know it)”.

    Maybe a developer. Not a programmer, of course!

    Fabio Galuppo

    15 Sep 08 at 16:02

  24. [...] great (and related) talks include Doug Purdy’s Lap Around Oslo, Matt’s Building WF Activities session, and Ed’s chocolate [...]

    kennyw.com » Blog Archive » PDC 2008

    15 Sep 08 at 22:42

  25. [...] and platform, but more recently, Microsoft has reined Oslo to refer specifically to the core tool, language and repository.) Messaging aside, what’s in the VS pipeline, according to Schlimmer? For [...]

    All about Microsoft mobile edition

    17 Sep 08 at 13:50

  26. [...] What is Oslo? « Douglas Purdy [...]

    DSL Tools, Software Factories and Oslo - Model-driven the Microsoft .NET way « .Net Braindrops

    20 Sep 08 at 20:59

  27. [...] Douglas Purdy is another one who is allowed to natter about OSLO. It seems that the tool chain is pretty ready, because of his wish to use community feedback in order to improve it. Apart of this, he does not reveal any details. [...]

    Simon Zambrovski | What is OSLO?

    22 Sep 08 at 00:20

  28. Well at last but 10 years behind UK company Procession. Build direct from the business model using a declarative process – storing tasks in the database with in built forms that recognises people their role the task type and the data required. No compliling and core code never changes. Truly the generic applicaion so hurry up Microsoft and get yours out so we can see just how good it is or not?

    David Chassels

    25 Sep 08 at 08:54

  29. [...] am particularly looking forward to the unveiling of Oslo, and getting my hands on the CTP.  I have been a Domain Driven Design advocate for a while [...]

    Oslo and new declarative language ‘D’ to be unvelied at Microsoft’s PDC 2008 « Fluent.Interface

    28 Sep 08 at 15:24

  30. [...] Doug Purdy and Don Box a few weeks ago posted additional information on Oslo.  Both Doug and Don will be speaking on Oslo at PDC and I encourage you to see their talks. [...]

    On The Journey : Oslo, Dublin and PDC

    9 Oct 08 at 18:17

  31. [...] twee interessante posts verschenen die het idee achter Oslo weergeven, geschreven door Don Box en Douglas Purdy, beiden werkzaam in het Oslo [...]

    Anko's Blog - eh? : Het einde van de programmeur?

    16 Oct 08 at 14:41

  32. [...] Don Box and Doug Purdy where on Dot.Net Rocks. I was quite excited to listen to them this morning on my morning commute to Basle. But I'm still confused: what is Oslo ? They still where talking in riddles, not telling any details. There are some traces in the blogs, like Doug put it in 3 bullet points: [...]

    Don opens the Box on Oslo - Michael Könings Blog

    16 Oct 08 at 19:33

  33. [...] It has 3 elements, according to Doug Purdy [...]

    Oslo « Waiming Mok’s Blog

    19 Oct 08 at 13:55

  34. [...] announcements and Doug Purdy's lap on Tuesday but, in the meantime, Oslo-lites like Don Box, Doug Purdy and especially Steve Martin have publicly defined Oslo, and Steve Martin has even talked about the [...]

    Oslo's Coming Out Party at the PDC - Sam Gentile If (DeveloperTask==Communication && OS==Windows)

    26 Oct 08 at 14:10

  35. I don’t believe that everyone should be made to feel like a programmer. That’s like saying you’re going to create a DIY brain surgery kit, so that everyone can feel like they are surgeons… This is a science, and introducing all of these modeling tools “dumbs” down the field. It’s so hard to find good programmers these days and I attribute it to wizards, designers, etc. Everyone is just so lazy these days…

    Joe Santec

    31 Oct 08 at 17:04

  36. [...] Oslo as Meta-DSL: Maybe this will not be the final solution, but Oslo is a nice looking Meta-DSL which allows it to define textually grammars for DSL or schemas. Mostly textual descriptions are a lot more maintainable as graphical descriptions and it is definitely easier to process them as XMI or MOF models. [...]

    Why Microsoft may be in the lead again « Information Bits

    4 Nov 08 at 09:49

  37. OSLO is awesome. Great work.

    On the other side, I have to pick on you for something you wrote in this post… Every time I read from somebody that they want to make “everybody a programmer” that makes me laugh a little.

    Wasn’t it Microsoft intention with creating VB1 back then? That was just after the 4GL languages were supposed to revolutionize the world too. :) I don’t even know if half of the kids out there knows what 4GL means. Check this link out: http://www.amazon.com/Application-Development-Without-Programmers-Martin/dp/0130389439.

    Woooot??? It seems that some guys wrote some books in 1982 about this concept… 25+ years later and yeah, programmers are still there and in fact in increasing demand worldwide and scarce…

    Keep up the good work on Oslo!!!

    Francois Germain

    7 Nov 08 at 03:55

  38. [...] The subject I want to write to you about is particularly your talk A Lap around “Oslo” at PDC as well as your post What is Oslo?. [...]

    Open Letter to Douglas Purdy: Eclipse, Oslo, and how to invent the future together « .Net Braindrops

    13 Nov 08 at 16:06

  39. [...] announcements and Doug Purdy’s lap on Tuesday but, in the meantime, Oslo-lites like Don Box, Doug Purdy and especially Steve Martin have publicly defined Oslo, and Steve Martin has even talked about the [...]

    Oslo's Coming Out Party at PDC : Sam Gentile's Blog

    2 Dec 08 at 01:07

  40. [...] announcements and Doug Purdy's lap on Tuesday but, in the meantime, Oslo-lites like Don Box, Doug Purdy and especially Steve Martin have publicly defined Oslo, and Steve Martin has even talked about the [...]

    Oslo's Coming Out Party at the PDC : Sam Gentile's Blog

    2 Dec 08 at 19:18

  41. [...] via What is Oslo? « Douglas Purdy. [...]

    Invalid Argument » What is Oslo? « Douglas Purdy

    16 Jan 09 at 09:34

  42. [...] What is Oslo? By Douglas Purdy [...]

    Download Oslo Tools And SDK January 2009 CTP | One .Net Way

    3 Feb 09 at 06:45

  43. I am very exited to see Microsoft make the transition from code base development into true Model Driven Development. a large number of concepts that microsoft is pursuing are central to our model driven development platform. Our technology is based on pioneering research and proven in over 30 enterprise class implementations and the fact that Microsoft is entering this market means that Model Driven Development is going to be the dominant developers paradigm moving forward. For some of our thoughts and experience check http://www.theenterprisearchitect.eu.

    Han Pieter Duyverman

    3 Mar 09 at 02:17

  44. [...] Oslo – http://www.douglaspurdy.com/2008/09/06/what-is-oslo/ [...]

    Episode 37: Jon Udell | Herding Code

    7 Mar 09 at 08:21

  45. [...] the “application development and delivery” category, maybe Doug Purdy’s vision “to make everyone a programmer (even if they don’t know it)” will be realized, whether through Oslo or [...]

    William Vambenepe’s blog » Blog Archive » Exploring “IT management in a changing IT world”

    13 Mar 09 at 07:13

  46. [...] in September of 2008 (previous to PDC 2008), I wrote a post titled, What is Oslo?.  Beyond my typical hyperbole, this post remains a fairly accurate description of what [...]

    On “Oslo” at Douglas Purdy

    17 Aug 09 at 05:28

  47. [...] in September of 2008 (previous to PDC 2008), I wrote a post titled, What is Oslo?.  Beyond my typical hyperbole, this post remains a fairly accurate description of what “Oslo” [...]

    On “Oslo” at Douglas Purdy « If you go down to Willow farm!

    17 Aug 09 at 15:15

  48. [...] Back in September of ‘08  Douglas Purdy wrote a bloga post titled, What is Oslo?. [...]

    Oslo Update : neuronspark

    18 Aug 09 at 01:19

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