Project Oslo, a.k.a. SQL Server Modeling Services

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Interesting. Project Oslo has an official name now, "SQL Server Modeling Services." It's interesting because Oslo seems strongly oriented toward developers, not SQL Server. For example, Oslo was absent from SQL PASS 2009, the leading SQL Server professional conference, which was only 3 weeks ago, and was instead announced at PDC09, which is the leading Microsoft conference for software developers. It's also interesting because the obvious acronym, SSMS, completely overlaps with the primary tool for administering SQL Server, the SQL Server Management Studio, which is also, obviously, SSMS.

I've been looking at Oslo lately, and as far as I've been able to figure it out, it ought to be Visual Studio UML Services. It appears to be a Unified Modeling Language (UML) software suite, comprised of a modeling language called M, a graphical data browser/editor called Quadrant, and a SQL Server database which has been called the Oslo Repository until now. I haven't heard if the "repository" will get a new name. I don't know what it has to do with SQL Server other than the fact that it stores its data and metadata there, but that doesn't make it a SQL Server feature.

Because of the slant toward developers, few of whom are DBA's or data modelers, here are few warnings about the terminology for Oslo:

* The term "model" does not refer to an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD), like any professional data modeler would expect. It refers to an abstract class that typically includes object-oriented programming classes.

* The term "entity" does not refer to the logical idea behind a physical table, it refers to a single row of data.

* The term "data domain" does not refer to a unique set of values in a table column, but I'm not quite sure what it does refer to.

* The term "extent" does not refer to a set of SQL Server data pages, it refers to table of columns and rows.

* The term "module" is used to refer to database schemas.

Furthermore, don't expect SQL Server Modeling Services to help you figure out the correct way to model data, as in creating a well-structured logical design for a database. Oslo is not designed to help you with data modeling, and does not require or facilitate best practices in data modeling.

As always, if I've gotten anything wrong, I'd love to be corrected.