Oslo (Microsoft) - Modeling Services Repository and Domains

Modeling Services Repository and Domains

From the Data Developer Center:

SQL Server Modeling Services provides a robust, enterprise-ready storage location for the data models. It takes advantage of the best features of SQL Server 2008 to deliver on critical areas such as scalability, security, and performance. The Base Domain Library (BDL) of SQL Server Modeling Services provides infrastructure and services, simplifying the task of creating and managing enterprise-scale databases. Modeling Services provides the foundation for productively building models and model-driven applications with SQL Server Modeling CTP.

Modeling Services also includes additional pre-built "domains," which are pre-defined models and tools for working with particular kinds of data. At present, such domains are included for:

1. The Common Language Runtime (CLR), which supports extracting metadata from CLR assemblies and storing them in the Modeling Services database in such a way that they can be explored and queried. A benefit to this domain is that it can maintain such information about the code assets of an entire enterprise, in contrast to tools such as the "Object Explorer" of Microsoft Visual Studio that only works with code assets on a single machine.
2. Unified Modeling Language (UML), which targets the Object Management Group's Unified Modeling Language (UML) specification version 2.1.2. UML 2.1.2 models in the Object Management Group's XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) version 2.1 file format can be imported into the Modeling Services database repository with a loader tool included with the SQL Server Modeling CTP.

Note that while the SQL Server Modeling Services is part of the toolset, models may be deployed into any arbitrary SQL Server database; the "Quadrant" tool is also capable of working with arbitrary SQL Server databases.