Douglas Purdy

At the end of 2007, we started hiring for a project that we referred to internally as “Emacs.Net”.

I often get asked about this project and it is a recurring search leading to this blog, so I thought I would give an update on what happened since we staffed up that team.

The short story is that we gave this project an official unofficial name: “Intellipad”.  This tool was included in the first “Oslo” CTP and continues to ship in the latest SQL Server Modeling CTP.

We designed “Intellipad” to work standalone as a lightweight companion to “Quadrant” and VS.  In addition, a core scenario was in situ use within “Quadrant” itself.

You can see three “Intellipad” views in “Quadrant” below (from the current CTP).  One shows “M”.  Another shows the T-SQL generated from the “M”.  The last shows “Intellipad” as the query editor in the table view.

The ‘Quadrant” integration is something we debuted at PDC this year, but the fact that we were going there shouldn’t have been a surprise.  First, I told anyone that asked and second the name is the best clue.  “Intellipad” is short for “Intellisense Workpad”.  A workpad is the name that we give for a view inside of “Quadrant”.

BTW:  One of the main developers of “Intellipad” and “Quadrant” has an impressive side-project that you may want to check out: SmallBasic.

[Update:  If you want to see what you can do with “Intellipad”, check out how we extend it for MUrl.]

At PDC 2009, I had an opportunity to sit down with Keith and Woody to talk about SQL Server Modeling (nee “Oslo”) and OData, among other topics.

I enjoyed doing the podcast.  Keith/Woody were great hosts.

You can listening at http://tinyurl.com/deepfried43.

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Before we gave “M” an official external codename, we called it “D” internally.

Back in the “D” days, our team started working with MSR on a number things related to the language.

We recently released some of that work on the MSR site: Dminor.

Dminor is a data-modeling language based on M, the data-modeling language of Microsoft Oslo. Dminor provides extended compile-time checking of code, making use of an SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories) solver.

You can read more about it at http://whigmaleerie.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!C6149B019D236BF5!846.entry.

You can download it at http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/cd60cdb0-353f-48b3-81d7-177621eba1bf/default.aspx.

Congrats to Andy and company…

I tweeted this, but I think it deserves a full post.  This a great example that leverages many of the different aspects of SQL Server Modeling (”M”-based DSLs, “M”, Modeling Services, etc.) to enable a better experience around application development/management.

One of the major new WCF features in .NET 4 is the Routing Service which is a configurable WCF-based service that supports content-based routing and protocol bridging. The content based routing capability in .NET 4 allows for WCF to perform message filtering based on content contained in either the SOAP headers or within the message body. For instance, if a company has two different versions of the same service deployed, the client application can call into a central routing service. The routing service can then forward the message to the correct backend service based on information it extracts from the incoming message, such as version number. The routing service also supports error handling routing that can automatically resend the message to another destination endpoint in the event of an error.

Unfortunately, the default routing service is not the easiest to manage or configure. Fortunately, the recently released SQL Server Modeling CTP makes it easy to build model driven application and the .NET 4 router configuration is a good modeling candidate. As such, the RouterManager sample which is available for download from MSDN Code Gallery, shows how this can be accomplished using Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 and the SQL Server Modeling CTP which was released in conjunction with PDC09. This is the first in a series of articles that will cover the architecture and concepts used in the RouterManager sample application to create a fully model driven content based router.

The SQL Server Modeling CTP can be used to create a domain specific language (DSL) that can make the routing configuration of the WCF routing service much simpler. This is accomplished by first defining a language that is human readable, which will provide IT Operations and others within an organization who are not expert developers with an easier way to interact with applications. The CTP’s modeling language features make it easy to define the structure of the configuration data in a human readable representation that can be shared within an application’s modules, tiers and tools or between even between applications. Also included, as part of the CTP, is the SQL Server Modeling Services, which provides functionality to store, access and share both the physical and metadata representation of the model. The Modeling CTP also provides a visual tool called “Quadrant” for viewing and interacting with models and model data.

http://blogs.msdn.com/dmcat/archive/2009/11/16/model-driven-content-based-routing-using-sql-server-modeling-ctp-part-i.aspx

I don’t know if these work against the latest CTP, but you can ask Ceyhun Ciper.

http://www.sixpairs.com/intellipad/mgraph-visualization-intellipad-plugin.aspx

“MUrl” is updated to the latest CTP (thanks SNinja and the rest of the Intellipad team).

There is a good readme in the zip file that outlines how to build, install and use it.

Download it now. 

[Updated on 2010/1/4 to fix a bug in installation]

Twitter.murl

How the credential information is stored

AAguiar asked me a question related to my EDM 3.0: Bring EDM and “M” together post that I wanted to answer here.

@douglasp In .edmx I could add attributes in my own namespace to enrich my model. How is that going to work with ‘M’?

In the latest CTP you can add attributes/annotations for “M” types, extents, fields, functions.

Below is a simple example.  Note the SQL that is generated by default, but you can control that as well.

I am on vacation this week, so that means that I am writing as much code as I can.

One of my little projects on .NET (I am spending a bunch of time writing iPhone code — updates to LocoFoto and something new) is an update to MUrl sample that I used as part of the MIX09 talk with Sells.

I had hoped to post it tonight, but I am running into some issues that the “Intellipad” team is helping with.

Hopefully tomorrow…

Speaking of “Intellipad”, make sure you check out the latest version of “Quadrant” in the CTP.

We have folded the Intellipad control into “Quadrant” in many ways that I think really adds to the experience (the query bar being the most obvious).

[Updated:  I re-recorded and added a voice over.]

The below screencast runs ~2 minutes and worth watching if you care about interacting with data (and who doesn’t).

What you see are 3 key features of “Quadrant” in the latest CTP:

• Access to SQL Azure databases
• Creating custom views (including master detail) by mashing views together
• See the “markup” of any view in Quadrant and steal it/change it (just like view source in a Web browser)

You also get to see the infinite canvas and the zoom features indirectly.

I am thinking about posting a couple more of these 2 minute demos over the course of the next couple weeks.

If you want to see something more in-depth now, check out the “Quadrant” PDC talk or Quadrant Overview video.

[Updated:  Download Video @ http://www.douglaspurdy.com/wp-content/uploads/quadrant1.swf]

One of the biggest things we have done in recent months is start to bring EDM and “M” together into one data model.

I could spend a bunch of time talking about the design principles behind that work, but I want to be as concrete as I can and get down to something that help you (if you are a .NET developer) today.

In a nutshell, “M” replaces the EDMX XML file that you are no doubt familiar with if you have used either the Entity Framework or Data Services.

Said differently, we have a nice human-friendly DSL that replaces a human-hostile XML file.

In addition, this nice, warm and friendly DSL can both generate your database and the EF classes you need to program against the database.

Before I talk about how this works, I want to say one thing:

EF and DS are at the knee of the adoption curve and we are not going to do anything to slow down that adoption; so rest assured that we are committed bring EDM and “M” together in a way that places the upmost importance on existing and future investments in EF and DS.

With that said, let’s look at a simple example (if you want to follow along, download the bits first)…

1. Look at all the “Oslo” VS projects that we have in the CTP bits (the name landed too late to get the bits updated).

2.  Let’s create a simple “M” model

3. Set the connection string in the project properties

4. Deploy (this will create the database and the CLR classes you need)

5. Write some code against the generated classes

6. Run the App

8. Under the covers (you can look in the obj folder to see what we generate)

9. Really under the covers, especially if you don’t like to use an IDE (you know who you are)

This uses a command-line option for m.exe and tool that will generate the EF classes for you.

I am fairly sure that someone on the language team is going to throw something at me when they read this.

When Sells and I talked about this feature at PDC, it resulted in at least two separate rounds of applause from the audience and I know it was a highlight (one of many) at the Box/Anderson anchor session.

You can get more details on this at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee713219(VS.85).aspx.