Here’s what Kraig has to say about the November 2010 SQL Server Model CTP that matches the RTM of Visual Studio 2010:

A update of the SQL Server Modeling CTP (November 2009) that’s compatible with the official (RTM) release of Visual Studio 2010 is now available on the Microsoft Download Center.  This release is strictly an updated version of the original November 2009 CTP release to support the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.

• SQL Server Modeling Nov09 CTP Release 3
• Release Notes

We highly recommend you uninstall and install in the following order.

1. Uninstall any existing SQL Server Modeling CTP from Add and Remove Programs
2. Uninstall Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Beta 2 or RC from Add and Remove Programs
3. Install Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4
4. Install the SQL Server Modeling November 2009 CTP Release 3.

If you are unable to uninstall SQL Server Modeling CTP from Add and Remove Programs for any reason, you can remove each component using the following command lines.  You need to run all three in order to completely remove SQL Server Modeling CTP so you can install the new CTP:

M Tools: Msiexec /x {B7EE8AF2-3DCC-4AFE-8BD2-5A6CE9E85B3A}

Quadrant: Msiexec /x {61F3728B-1A7D-4dd8-88A5-001CBB9D2CFA}

Domains: Msiexec /x {11DA75C8-10AB-4288-A1BB-B3C2593524A7}

Note: These steps will not remove the SQL Server Modeling CTP entry in Add and Remove Programs but you will be able to install the new CTP.

Thank you and enjoy Visual Studio 2010!

Kraig Brockschmidt
Program Manager, Data Developer Center

Here’s how the Deep Fried guys describe episode 45: “At PDC 2009, ‘Oslo’ was renamed to SQL Modeling and it left a lot of developers scratching their heads. What better way to sort it all out than to talk with someone deep into the stack. We sat down with Lars Corneliussen to see how this is all going to turn out and it what it means for developers. Definitely an interesting show as it paints a different picture about where things are going with ‘M’, ‘M’ Grammar, SQL modeling, Entity Framework, Quadrant and so on.” Check it out!

An update of the SQL Server Modeling CTP (November 2009) that’s compatible with Visual Studio 2010 RC has been released on the Microsoft Download Center. This release is strictly an updated version of the original November 2009 CTP release to support Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 RC. It contains no other fixes outside of those required to work with the new RC. Enjoy!

We are currently preparing a release of the SQL Server Modeling November 2009 CTP that will install and operate with Visual Studio Release Candidate. We expect to make this release available the first week of March and will make an announcement here at that time.

We are also planning for another release of the November CTP that matches the final Visual Studio product (RTM) when that product becomes generally available.

The Telerik LINQ to “M” implementation allows developers to use LINQ statements with blocks of “M” values, pure text or the results of a transformed DSL. With the new SQL Server Modeling November 2009 CTP there are some changes to the “M” specification, so Telerik has updated their core DLLs to accommodate these changes. Enjoy!

“In the 43rd episode of Deep Fried Bytes, Keith and Woody sit down at PDC 2009 with Microsoft’s Douglas Purdy to discuss all things data. Do you remember Oslo from the previous PDC event? Well Oslo has been rebranded to SQL Server Modeling Services to help developers store and manage models for the enterprise. Modeling Services enables you to more productive when building and managing data-driven applications. The guys also get the low down from Douglas on a new web protocol for querying and updating data called OData.”

Rockford Lhotka has created a series of three videos showing how he has applied the SQL Server Modeling, specifically “M”, to drive his well-known CSLA, a framework for building the business logic layer in your applications. He shows a custom domain-specific language (DSL) that lets you create a CSLA entity, along with the data serialization, business logic and a forms-based UI, resulting in a 95% coding savings (his words, not mine : ). Enjoy!

Soma has posted a lovely description of what’s new in the Entity Framework for .NET 4.0, including:

• Foreign Key support so you can add a row without requiring you to download an object just to get the foreign key.
• Lazy Loading support so as you traverse a property that is a collection, the data is pulled on demand.
• Plain Old CLR Object support (POCO) so that you can build your own classes and have EF serialize those instead of generating new classes.
• T4-based Code Generation in case you do want classes generated but want to control the code.
• Data binding support for WPF and WinForms.
• WCF support with serialization attribute generation.
• Much better SQL generation so that you can read it better when you need what’s going on over the wire and so that it’s more efficient.
• Much better support for complex return values from stored procedures.

That Soma really knows his stuff! Check it out.

I’m such a fan of LINQPad you don’t even know. Recently Joe updated it to support Data Services and as of today, if you scroll down to the bottom of the LINQPad download page, it’s been updated to support .NET 4.0 beta 2, which means that you can point it at Data Services constructed with .NET 4.0. This makes my heart sing. Also, if you haven’t spent the $29 to get the auto-completion, it’s totally worth it. Highly recommended. Thanks, Joe!

This is a nice piece comparing NHibernate and EF4. Personally, I’m an EF4 fan, but I’m hardly unbiased and there are definitely features I want to see added to EF v.Next. Either way, it’s clear that EF4 is garnering much more appreciation from the community than previous versions and that’s because you let us know what you wanted and we added it. Keep those cards and letters coming!

If you weren’t lucky enough to be able to attend this year’s PDC, not only did you not get a killer laptop, but you didn’t get to see the Data & Modeling talks live and in person. Fortunately, Doug has a nice list of them so you can watch them from the comfort of your own home. Enjoy!

Doug Purdy shows off three features of “Quadrant” from the Nov ’09 SQL Server Modeling CTP bits in two minutes:

• 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)

Enjoy!

I couldn’t wait for the PDC, so I posted a screen shot of my favorite new three features of “M” for defining domain-specific languages (DSLs) in the November 2009 CTP of “Oslo”:

• Expressions on the right-hand side in language actions to calculate results. “M” supports a rich expression syntax for a variety of data types.

• Data conversion functions for output, one for each of the supported “M” data types.

• DSL debugging mode to let you step through your input data and debug your language.

I can’t wait for you to see it!

In the November 2009 CTP of “Oslo”, we’ve got some new DSL features in “M”, three of which I couldn’t wait for the PDC to brag about.

Notice the following in this screenshot of Intellipad:

• The use of an expression on the right-hand side to calculate the full name from the first and last name from the parsed input: Name => f + ” ” + l (“M” supports a rich expression syntax for a variety of data types).

• The use of ToInteger32 to provide output data conversion of the Age token as different from the default of string (there’s one of these functions for each of the supported “M” data types).

• The orange highlighted text in the left-hand pane shows a breakpoint and notice that Intellipad knows that “yours old.” is a single thing, so highlights the entire phrase. Also notice the “notification” pane on the far right to show what the data is that’s being parsed right now. This indicates that Intellipad is now in DSL debugging mode and lets you step through your input data and debug your language.

You’ll also notice richer error information in the Error List at the bottom of the Intellipad window, but that I could’ve waited to tell you about. : )

All of these “M” features and more can be yours for the low low price of absolutely nothing in the latest CTP of “Oslo”, which you can download on November 17th, the first day of the PDC.

Discuss

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Doug Purdy, my boss and one of the chiefs on the “Oslo” project has just announced the move from codename “Oslo” to SQL Server Modeling, which is the name we’ll be using for starting now for the group of “M”, “Quadrant” and Repository that you’ve come to know and love.

Tune in on November 17th, the first day of the PDC, for the new unified Data Developer Center, which will include all manner of data technologies, including XML, DataReader, DataSet, LINQ to SQL, Data Services (aka “Astoria”) and Entity Framework. One stop shopping!

I was on .NET Rocks! recently talking to Richard and Carl about data in Visual Studio (object-oriented, XML and relational), what tools Microsoft is already providing for managing your SQL Server schema and data migration and where “Oslo” (“M”, “Quadrant” and the Repository) fits into the overall picture. It was fun and I think it turned out well. Enjoy.

Gerben van Loon, a lead developer at Avanade, has put together a nice overview of a DSL they’ve been building for describing questionnaires in “M”, seeing how they flow in Quadrant and then executing them on their web site. Sweet stuff!

Kevin D. Wolf has built a sweet little language to describe state machines:

The States of a Invoice are New, Reviewed, Submitted, Paid, Overdue and Canceled.

An Invoice can transition from New to Reviewed and Canceled.
An Invoice can transition from Reviewed to Submitted and Canceled.
An Invoice can transition from Submitted to Paid, Overdue and Canceled.
An Invoice can transition from Overdue to Paid and Canceled.

He built this with a language definition in “M”. What could be simpler?

Holy “M” types, Batman! Somebody’s been busy building M type definitions for tons of existing data models, including ATOM, AWK, BPEL, C/C++/C#/Java, COBOL, HTML, LaTeX, Make and the list goes on and on. I don’t know how they did it — it’s an amazing task! Now that they’ve got some free time back, maybe they’ll build M language definitions to parse the file formats. I’m just sayin’… : )

Felice has built a domain specific language (DSL) for defining NHibernate entities using “Oslo”, including both a command-line compiler and a very full-featured Intellipad add-in. Nice!

Bill Henning from Actipro Software has done it again, this time providing the components to drop real-time language creation features into your application for building custom grammars in the critically acclaimed SyntaxEditor control. Enjoy!

Kraig Brockschmidt, the author of calc.exe and the famous (and infamous : ) ”Inside OLE,” has been a part of the “Oslo” community team for a while and is now blogging in the way that only he can. He’s building some samples as he explores the feet on the ground experience and you should check it out. Enjoy!

Amanda Laucher talks about Oslo and its tools, Intellipad, m.exe and mg.exe - the “M” compilers - and how they can be used to create a DSL. She demonstrates the creation of a demo DSL in Oslo, and she does it in a very approachable way. [ed: Quadrant is available with the May CTP.]

“In the May CTP bits, we started working on parts of uninstall support for schema created by an image, but didn’t expose it as a user-visible feature as we will in future CTPs. So if you want to get your hands on this functionality right now, give this SQL script a try. This creates a stored procedure creatively named ‘Uninstall,’ which takes one argument, the id of the image to uninstall which can be obtained from the [Language.Catalog.Runtime].[Images] table.”

Dave Langer, an architect at Microsoft, explores the question of how to model inheritance in “M”. What do you think? What support for inheritance should “Oslo” provide? What scenarios do you need us to nail in this area? Let us know!

Mikael Håkansson has built a WCF ServiceHostFactory to load service configurations from the “Oslo” Repository, which allows you to configure your services with “Quadrant”. And he does it even though the Service.ServiceModel type that has been removed from the May CTP (Keith Short talks about why). Check it out!

Imagine you’ve shipped v1 of your database applications against a schema created from “M”. Now, you’re about to ship the v2 of your database, but what about the v1 clients? Are the tables and views exposed from your database backward compatible or are you going to break those existing clients? How do you even find out?

Well, wonder no more! Telerik has shipped the alpha of their “Oslo” comparison tool, which can compare v1 of your “M” source code against v2 to see what’s changed and whether that’s going to break your v1 clients. And as if that weren’t enough, they’re working on another version of the tool that will create scripts so that you can migrate your v1 data to v2 after you’re satisfied that your v1 clients will continue to work.

And the best part? It’s all free! Download yours today.

Stephen Forte and Mehfuz (who, like Prince and Cher, needs no last name), have built LINQ to “M”, which means that if you’ve got “M” source code like this (shown in a C# string variable for loading convenience):

string MGraphCode =
  @"{{Name=""Stephen Forte"", Age=37}, ... }";

and a C# type like this:

public class Person {
  public string Name { get; set; }
  public int Age { get; set; }
}

then you can load the “M” source and run LINQ queries against it:

var persons =
  QueryContext.Instance.Load<Person>(MGraphCode);
var result =
  from person in persons
  where person.Age == 37 &&
    person.Name == "Stephen Forte"
  orderby person.Name ascending
  select person;

Enjoy!

In part 1 and part 2 of his series, Dana Kaufman, a Program Manager on the “Oslo” team, used “M” to model the schema for employee information and to create a domain-specific language (DSL) for creating values of that schema. In part 3, Dana shows how to navigate the schema and models in “Quadrant,” the data visualization and manipulation tool of “Oslo.” Enjoy!

Rockford Lhotka of several C# and VB books and the world-renown CSLA .NET business object framework has ported his “Oslo”-based MCsla.NET to the May 2009 CTP. For the part that he’s made work in “Oslo,” Rocky has told me that the amount of code you need to write to take advantage of his framework is down by 90% over the C#/VB.NET versions, which sounds like a pretty big win to me. Enjoy!

Matthew Wilson is pushing “M” into the land of browser client-side scripting with his partial (but growing!) JavaScript implementation, as seen in his web 3-pane “M” grammar mode ala Intellipad. It’s work like this that could make “M” a cross-platform solution for languages as well as data types and values. Good job, Matt!

Keith and Woody speak with the first repeat guest of the podcast, Shawn Wildermuth about Oslo and the M language.  In this episode listeners will get some real world examples and use cases for using Oslo and M along with a clearer understanding about DSLs and what the future may hold.

Be warned, this podcast uses the phrase “bowled shrimp.” : )

Dana Kaufman, a PM on the extended “Oslo” team, has been blogging a series of articles on the definition of a set of “M” types, the associated “M” language definition for a domain-specific language (DSL) and concluding in how that data can be visualized and manipulated in “Quadrant” (the first two parts are available now and the third is coming). Enjoy!

Do you like Intellipad so much that you want to host it? If so, than you need Actipro’s SyntaxEditor, which is not only a kick-butt syntax highlighting editor, but can be completely driven by an “Oslo” language definition in a .mg file. The demo is free and one of the samples is a fun little Intellipad clone. Check it out!

I love our customers. They do things like take our bits and produce MGDisplay, a tool written by Ceyhun Ciper for visualizing the parse tree produced by parsing a DSL instance document with a “M” language definition. Enjoy!

Jeff Pinkston, the lead program manager on the “M” languages team has some questions that he’d love your feedback on:

• How do you think about “M” inter-operating with XML? XSD? Other data formats?
• Given that OO languages are nominally typed and “M” is structurally typed, what is the purpose of a type? How do you think about it?

The “Oslo” team is just at the beginning of our last real milestone before the PDC in November, so the answers to these questions help us to decide how to spend our time. I know that it seems like Microsoft has the ability to crank out the great works of Shakespeare, but we’re limited by time and resources, too, so if you have an opinion on these questions, drop by Pinky’s place and let him know what you think. Or, if you’ve got other suggestions about how to improve “Oslo”, drop them into our suggestion box!

The translation from Dutch is pretty good: “The better you can describe applications in models, the less code you need to write and the more transparency you provide to developers and others.” Computable spoke with Chris Sells. De programmamanager van de Connected Systems Divisie van Microsoft was in Nederland voor een Hot-or-Not lezing, georganiseerd door Sioux. The program manager of the Connected Systems Division of Microsoft in the Netherlands for a Hot-or-Not reading, organized by Sioux.

But they chose the strangest picture…

In Scott Hanselman’s April 2009 podcast, Visiting Fog Creek Software and Joel Spolsky, Joel talks about Wasabi, FogCreek’s VBScript compiler, and he talks about it really being a subset of VBScript used specifically for bringing FogBugz to Unix and the CLR. In fact, it’s a VBScript compiler built specifically to compile a single application, doing things like making the 5% of ADO.NET they use cross-platform. And just in case the point isn’t completely obvious, Joel and Scott draw the conclusion for us: Wasabi is the domain-specific language just for FogBugz. Just another DSL in nature.

Here. Our own Paul Vick is on CodeCast: The Late Night Show for .NET Developers, with your hosts Ken Levy, Gary Short, and Markus Egger. Enjoy!

This year’s VSLive in Las Vegas (June 8-11), has three, count ’em three, “Oslo” talks! (And a Dublin talk to boot.) Just a few months ago, the “Oslo” team was giving all the talks and now there are so many of them I have to hear about them on the street! Our baby grew up so fast…

And as if that weren’t enough, Jon Flanders gave me a code for a discount:

“If you register with code S9V10 you can get and all-access Passport Package for just $1,295, a savings of $400.00 off the standard price of $1,695.”

I know I loved MIX in Vegas last month and I’m jealous I don’t get to go back in June. Put some money down on 22 for me!

This is a wonderful article on the use of an “M” grammar to parse a set of rules specific to credit card validation and then parse those rules at run-time to drive a framework for doing the validation itself. The article does a marvelous job of motivating the use of a custom DSL for construction and validation by non-engineers and then lays out the entire grammar and C# loader code. Recommended.

The nice folks over at InfoQ have been building up some Oslo content and reporting on Oslo news. Check it out!

Here. Learn how Web developers can use “M”, a new language for describing data, metadata and domain specific languages, to enhance RESTful services like HTTP, JSON, RSS/Atom, and more. Also see how “M” can be used on premise or in the cloud to achieve greater development productivity and to create more compelling customer experiences. Speakers: Douglas Purdy & Chris Sells

Here. Doug Purdy and Chris Sells will be giving their Mix ’09 talk on Friday, March 20th at 9am in San Polo 3501. Doug will be talking about RESTful services and clients using “M”, the language of “Oslo”. Chris will be typing furiously trying to keep up. Come one, come all! Plus, free hugs from Doug to anyone that mentions this post!

Doug Purdy and I will be giving an “M” talk about web stuff at this year’s Mix:

Learn how Web developers can use “M”, a new language for describing data, metadata and domain specific languages, to enhance RESTful services like HTTP, JSON, RSS/Atom, and more. Also see how “M” can be used on premise or in the cloud to achieve greater development productivity and to create more compelling customer experiences.

Come one, come all!

Stephen has three more installments in his series on modeling an application in Oslo: Discovery, Domain Entities and Refactoring and Transforming MGraph to TSQL. It’s fascinating to watch him use the platform starting from scratch. Recommended!

ExtractM is a sample command-line tool for extracting M source code from compiled M images by Shannon Koh, a developer on the “Oslo” team. Enjoy!