Living in the Tech Avalanche Generation

I have an itch. A modelling domain specific language itch. I must say that my interest in new languages has been reinvigorated of late and this has seen a flurry of activity around the DLR, IronRuby, IronPython and now most recently the M family of languages via my curiosity in what Oslo has to offer. I haven’t yet delved nearly as far as I intend into M and Oslo, however from what I have seen I must admit I am interested in the possibilities that (small) DSL’s might offer, particularly in the vertical I happen to work in.

HOWEVER

My grandfather had a great saying for when he or other people seemed to find themselves in a state of confusion, he called it “oogle boogled” and I have to say that after Doug Purdy’s latest post I am feeling a bit that way right now. My read on things is that Microsoft seem to be placing “M” and Oslo adjacent to a war cry of  “DATA, DATA, DATA, DATA” and hence the announcement that:

“the modelling platform is aligned in a deep and fundamental way with the data programmability stack (ADO.NET, EF/EDM, Astoria, etc”

Doug also goes on to announce that the teams have come closer (much) together, with:

“we made a decision to merge the Data Programmability team (EDM, EF, Astoria, XML, ADO.NET, and tools/designers) and the “Oslo” team (“Quadrant”, Repository, “M”) together”

What Interested me in the first place?

The piece that interested me mostly about Oslo was MGrammar and building textual DSL’s. The reason was simple, I work in a industry where we have a throng of ‘Data Managers’, where I (and others) are engaged in building tools that help these guys manage data. These ‘Data Managers’ are by definition pretty data savvy and tech literate. The potential for the DSL’s in this space largely revolves around tool aids and even the ability to code gen workflow and deployment instructions. So in short I look forward to seeing what the possibilities are with writing DSL’s that produce navigable models and from there it’s a land of unknown promise. Of course to the Eclipse community this is nothing new, but for an old Visual Studio hack like me, it’s a brave new world.

My concern is that if the focus swings deep enough into the “DATA DATA DATA DATA” mantra, somehow the potential for what excited me about the Oslo initiative will perhaps be diminished in it’s significance. I am certainly not stating this to be case, only that it’s a concern of a dilatant, (me), on his way to becoming enlightened. Perhaps misunderstanding on my part and perhaps lost in the articulation on theirs?