Microsoft is working on a next-generation cloud programming model and related tools to possibly augment its cloud strategy already being played out with Windows Azure.
Microsoft
is working on a next-generation cloud programming model and related tools to
possibly augment its cloud strategy already being played out with Windows
Azure, according to documents uncovered by a prominent Microsoft observer.
In
an Aug. 18 blog post on her "
All
About Microsoft" site, Mary Jo Foley cites documents pointing to a
Microsoft research project codenamed Orleans.
According to Foley:
"So
what is Orleans, exactly? Orleans
is a new programming model designed to raise the level of abstraction above
Microsoft's Common Language Runtime (CLR). Orleans
introduces the concept of -grains' as being units of computation and data
storage that can migrate between data centers. Orleans
also will include its own runtime that will handle replication, persistence and
consistency. The idea is to create a single programming model that will work on
clients and servers, which will simplify debugging and improve code mobility."
Moreover,
slides Foley uncovered also referenced
Volta,
which is a project Microsoft described as an effort to democratize cloud
application development. From description of the Volta
work in 2007, Microsoft researcher Erik Meijer said, "'If you look at when VB
came on the market, it was really, really hard to do Windows programming. You
had to be a C++ programmer, and then VB came around and then suddenly people
could write Windows programs. Now it's the era of the Web, but in some senses
we're back in the early days of Windows programming."
He
added: "Just like Visual Basic democratized programming Windows by removing
much of the boilerplate, such as message pumps and window handles, that
contributed more to the problem than to the solution, we propose a toolkit of
language extensions, APIs and tools that do the same for Web programming."
Meanwhile,
the documents said nothing about any plans Microsoft might have for the Orleans
technology-or whether it is purely a Microsoft Research effort or if the
company has plans to productize it.
Whatever
the case, "Orleans" appears as
though it would fit directly in with Microsoft's effort to empower developers
for cloud app development. In an interview with eWEEK at Microsoft's Worldwide
Partner Conference in July,
Amitabh
Srivastava, senior vice president of Microsoft's Server and Cloud Division,
said Microsoft built its Windows Azure cloud platform with developers in mind
from the start.
"When
we were developing Azure from day one it was done for developers," Srivastava
said. "You have to allow developers to bring their skills, their current set of
skills, to the cloud. So we said developers should get to choose the language
they want to use. You can use any environment you want. You can use Visual
Studio or you can do the entire development in Eclipse. You can't pigeonhole
developers into one or two languages or one or two frameworks. Just because our
lineage is Windows Server doesn't mean we will restrict you to using C# or a
Microsoft language."
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