What are the Microsoft codenames “Oslo” and “Dublin”?

What is "Oslo"?

(from the “Oslo” developer site,)

"Oslo" is the code name for our platform for model-driven applications. The goal of "Oslo" is to provide a 10x productivity gain by making model-driven applications mainstream. At the core of this platform are domain-specific models, language and tools:

  • A language, "M" , for authoring domains textually
  • A tool, Quadrant, for authoring domains visually
  • A Repository for managing domain models
  • A library of pre-built domain models and languages

Together, these components will make it more efficient for a team to develop, implement, and maintain applications and services…

Oslo talk at MIX, Developing RESTful Services and Clients with M, featuring Chris Sells and Doug Purdy. 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…

 

What is “Dublin”?

From the Windows Application Server Roadmap page, Riding the Next Platform Wave: .NET Framework 4.0 and Windows Server "Dublin"

…To address these new requirements, Microsoft is enhancing both the .NET Framework and Windows Server. The company is adding significant functionality to the new version of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) as part of the .NET Framework 4.0 release, including new messaging and REST capabilities in WCF, new workflow models, seamless integration between WF and WCF to support stateful and conversational services, and a new visual designer. The company is also introducing a set of enhanced Windows Server capabilities codenamed "Dublin" that will offer greater scalability and easier manageability, while extending Internet Information Services (IIS) to provide a standard host for applications that use workflow or communications…

From Aaron Skonnard in a MSDN article titled WCF And WF Services In The .NET Framework 4.0 And “Dublin”:

Microsoft has been working on a new set of extensions to Windows Server—code-named "Dublin"—that provides valuable hosting and management features for your WCF and WF applications. "Dublin" is essentially a set of service management extensions built on top of IIS/WAS that will ship as part of Windows Server. When using the "Dublin" extensions, you'll still be hosting your service and workflows in IIS/WAS, but your applications will enjoy additional WCF and WF-specific management capabilities and tools that don't currently exist in IIS/WAS.

The various "Dublin" extensions will ship in a future version of Windows Server as part of the Windows Server Application Server role. Hence, the set of features is often referred to as the Windows Application Server, although that's not the official name sanctioned by Microsoft. For the rest of this article, I'll refer to the new Windows Server Application Server extensions as simply "Dublin."

The key capabilities provided by the "Dublin" extensions include management support for reliable and durable services and long-running workflows. "Dublin" makes it possible to deploy an application to individual servers across a farm, and it provides the tools you need for specific service management tasks. I will be discussing these capabilities in more detail throughout the following sections, but first let's take a look at the overall architecture, which is illustrated [below]…

 

For more information and product details, please read this overview of WCF 4.0, WF 4.0, and Windows Server "Dublin" technologies…