Douglas Purdy

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee730343.aspx

This is one of the best articles that I have read about the Microsoft data and modeling history and strategy. 

Kraig wrote this piece and I love it.

Below is at the end of the doc that talks about modeling…

Data Development Futures: Modeling

If we take a step back from the whole arc of the discussion we’ve had in this article, we can see a definite trend toward greater levels of abstraction. The earliest data access solutions for SQL Server, like DB-Library and ESQL for C, were sufficient though quite rudimentary. Technologies like ODBC created an abstraction layer above the proprietary APIs of different databases, a model that OLE DB, ADO, and ADO.NET continue to follow.

Most recently, the Entity Framework has gone a step further to create an additional abstraction layer not over the data access API but over the structure of a relational database itself. Similarly, Data Services transform any number of diverse data sources into something accessible through a simple REST-based exchange protocol. (In fact, Microsoft expects that using such protocols will become increasingly popular, as it allows data providers and consumers to evolve independently from their programming model.)

Taken as a whole, this trend can be described as a trend toward modeling, the act of creating representations of real-world concepts that are internally translated into the representations that computer systems (like database engines) inherently understand.

What’s key here is that modeling itself is something that takes place outside of the database, in large part because data often spans multiple databases and multiple formats. Thus what matters is the richness of the pipeline between what’s in the data store and what runs outside that store.

Increasing that richness is the purpose of Microsoft’s next wave of investments beyond the Entity Framework and Data Services (see Entity Framework futures and Data Services futures), namely a body of technologies collectively called the SQL Server Modeling CTP (Community Technology Preview). Rather than replacing existing data development methods, these technologies introduce new ways of working with SQL Server databases along with greater availability of metadata alongside the data itself.

Metadata—or information about data and applications—is the key to the next advances in developer productivity with data-oriented applications. Modeling, in other words, is a recognition that data about an application, and data about data, is just as important as the application and data themselves. And the components of the SQL Server Modeling CTP, shown in Figure 10 as a projection from Figure 9, are the ways in which Microsoft is beginning to explore this new territory.

Figure 10: Future technologies in the SQL Server Modeling CTP.

The code name “M” language is like a more manageable (though more limited) form of Transact-SQL, the language normally used to describe data schema and values. It’s also closely aligned with the purpose of the EDMX files used in the Entity Framework to implement the conceptual layer (or Entity Data Model). The "M" language is, in fact, being developed as a textual language that also implements the Entity Data Model, and will serve alongside the XML-based EDMX dialect. Furthermore, "M" includes powerful support for the creation of domain-specific languages (DSLs) in which application logic, data access layers, and even an application’s user interface can be easily defined by even non-developers.

SQL Server Modeling Services, for its part, deals with enterprise-wide metadata and the kinds of applications that enterprises are interested in building around that metadata. And the code name “Quadrant” tool provides a visual means of interacting with relational data in ways that have traditionally been either very difficult or have necessitated a custom application of some kind. Many “forms over data” applications that have to date been written using the other data access technologies we’ve seen can be quickly assembled directly within “Quadrant”.