Tools

Microsoft has finally launched a much awaited new stand alone organization for open source contribution and development.

CodePlex.org Mission statement

“The mission of the CodePlex Foundation is to enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities.”

The organization is totally independent of Microsoft and is launched under 501(c)(6) which categorizes it as a “business league devoted to the improvement of business conditions of one or more lines of business. It is not engaged in any regular business typically carried on by for-profits.”

The goals and vision are according to the mindset of directors and the contributors. Among it board members are some of the very well known such as

Phil Haack Microsoft and Scott Hanselman Microsoft.

It will be run by the foundation partners and contributors but how will it differentiate itself from other open source platforms or what difference will it make for .Net developers / professionals or for Microsoft itself.

Their are varying prospective, To me it will bring a balance to the development using Microsoft technologies as .Net professional and to Microsoft itself as an organization which is to offer its support for community as a whole rather than having only a profit centric approach.

This step will also help to bridge a gap between open source developers and .Net developers.

Microsoft is taking several steps to make .Net platform acceptable to all communities and inclusion of several addins and welcoming of several third party efforts into the development environment like Asp.Net Mvc are good examples and CodePlex will support this effort further.

Microsoft is probably determined to grab its lost share online. It has made several moves to improve its position in the long run by yahoo merger and the launch of Bing
It is good news though for me as .Net developers. Only reason for open source success like java related technologies is that they are open source. Now Microsoft has decided to be open source as well to some extents. This means you pay for a standard licence for Visual studio and then keep on adding libraries and tool kits free of cost. This thing is already going on with some of the successful java based development platforms such asIntellij. Let’s hope it is positive for all of us in development and client domain

All philosophies welcome and you may participate in the poll Open Source development Contributions if you wish
Further links

CodePlex.org
CodePlex on twitter

we have several successful and variable models in the market for software lifecycle management like say ‘Waterfall’ and ‘WinWin’ etc, I have always thought of having
something from Microsoft to work out on projects which are based on .Net.

‘OSLO’
In the “Oslo” modelling methodology, information is contained in a XAML file.
Data about the model is located in the “Oslo” repository, a SQL Server database in form of model data structures, relationships, and constraints in a secure, robust, and scalable manner

Interaction with Model data:
There are two ways to manipulate and work with your models

• Intellipad
• Quadrant

For Intellipad:
http://blogs.msdn.com/intellipad/default.aspx

“Quadrant”
Microsoft code name “Quadrant” is a graphical tool for viewing, editing, and exploring data found in any SQL Server database. As the data about the model is located in repository, people can query that data and get a graphical representation using tools from Microsoft, having code name “Quadrant”.
“Quadrant” is part of the code name “Oslo” modelling technologies are used for navigating data in databases, and that modules, extents, and entities defined using the Microsoft code name “M” tool chain are surfaced directly in “Quadrant”. Instead of interacting with the underlying SQL Server data, you can simply use “Quadrant” to easily browse data.
Another interesting thing is we are able to browse modelling data stored in the underlying Sql server DB in simple windows folder navigation pattern.

How all Works:

Release Plan for OSLO

Courtesy: Guy Burstein Blog http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/bursteg/archive/2007/10/31/oslo-future-direction-of-microsoft-bpm-platform.aspx

How to Get Started:

Download Link for Oslo SDK:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=827122a5-3ca0-4389-a79e-87af37cbf60d&displaylang=en

Along with ‘Oslo’ SDK istallation, there is also added one “Oslo” template in your Visual Studio visible as ‘M’ project.

More about how to get it and running follow:
http://vkreynin.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/creating-an-m-project-in-vs-2010/