Last month Mary Jo Foley wrote that Microsoft is working on a new language named D as part of Oslo. Before we leap to conclusions about what D might stand for, let us recall that the C language was so named because it was derived from B which was a stripped down version of BCPL. Such is the stuff of software engineers' so-called humor. So much for musing.

Indeed, D is a declarative modeling language. According to Mary Jo, Microsoft's Chief Modeling Officer (nice title) Don Box spoke about D at the 2008 Lang.Net Symposium at the end of January. D, says Don, is about "putting more and more of your application into data and putting less in code." That is central to Oslo, the next technology wave from Microsoft, which has as its goal "making a new class of model-driven and service-enabled applications mainstream."

A few days after Mary Jo's article, InfoWorld ran an article covering Bill Gates speaking at the 2008 Office System Developers Conference on Microsoft's declarative modeling language effort, but Bill didn't mention D by name. Okay, D may very well be a project codename, so let's not get too invested in the name. And even if it is the current name of the language, what are the chances that marketing will be able let an opportunity like that go by unspoiled?

Between these two articles, Don and Bill have some pithy, interesting things to say about declarative languages and their importance in modeling complex systems.