When you are ready to create a web site sitting down to think of the site blueprint is probably not one of the first things on your mind. You want to get right into coding or designing snazzy graphics. Great web sites however have to be properly thought out. Information architecture is defined by the Information Architecture Institute as:
1. The structural design of shared information environments.
2. The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities, and software to support findability and usability.
3. An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

In short “Information Architecture  is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do and then constructing a blueprint before you dive in and put the thing together” – Webmonkey.com

The first step in Information Architecture is to define your sites goals. Next step is to ask questions. Then filter the answers before creating a design document.

» Read more: Information Architecture

So you have your site planned out and now its time to write content for it. Writing for the web presents different challenges than print. There is a lot more information to keep track of. Not only do you have to write articles, sales text or hyperlinks that stand out, you also have to take into consideration meta data, that search engines use to find your web site.

Having a plan on how to write content for your site is vital to creating a site that has solid long-lasting relationships between a company and the people it serves. It can help an organization deliver on its brand promises and even solve business problems. It involves understanding the user experience, determining what web writing does and doesn’t work and following the top 10 writing tips. » Read more: Top 10 Writing Tips for the web

The Information Technology Infrastructure Library lovingly referred to as ITIL is a set of concepts and practices for managing Information Technology services, development and operation. It was founded by the UK Government in the 1980s as the need to have standard IT practices began to arise.

Some of the main tenets of this discipline are:

• Service Support- This practice focuses on the user of the service, primarily censuring they have access to the appropriate servcies to support business functions. This involves effectively managing changes, incidents, releases and other configuration related issues.
• Service Delivery – This practices is mostly concerned with the proactive services the technology department must deliver to provide adequate support to business users. This involves efectively managing service levels, capacity, continuity, availability and finanacials.
• ICT Infrastructure Management -This contains recfommendation for best practivces for requirements analysis, planning, deployment, and ongoing operations and technical support
• Security Management – This involves managing information security in the management organization. The primary goal is to protect information assets against risk and maintain their value to the organization.
• The Business Perspective – This are issues that are encountered in understanding and improving IS Services as part of the entire business this involves issues such as Business Continuity Management, Surviving change, transformation of business practices through radical change, partnerships and outsourcing
• Application Management – These are the best practices employed to improve the overall quality of IT software development and support throughout software development projects.
• Software Asset Management – is the practice of integrating people, processes and technology to allow usage and licenses to be systematically tracked and managed.This reduces IT expenditures. » Read more: Information Technology Infrastructure Library

No I am not talking about the capital and largest city in Norway. Oslo is Microsoft’s modeling tool used for Business Process Modeling. The project was started in 2003 as an easy way for business analysts to transform requirements into initial database objects without a lot of technical expertise, change the software/requirements problem into a database design exercise.  This appears to have been a lofty goal however and since then Project Oslo has morphed from a Biz Server integration project to more of a modeling tool used to be shipped in some future edition of SQL Server. Doing research on Oslo, was a bit confusing as it has had more name changes than P Diddy and Prince combined. As of this writing, Oslo is now called the SQL Server Modeling CTP. I will keep calling it Oslo for now, as it easier to type and it sounds cooler than SQLSMCTP. It may have another name by the time you read this anyway.

All jokes aside, Oslo is a powerful platform made of three parts:

• The Language -  Now called M, formerly known as D. This language allows you to enter descriptions for the objects you are developing and from those descriptions develop your own grammar that is then used to create SQL for database objects in an xml like type syntax using attributes like an xsd.
• The Tool – If modeling data with text is not your thing. Oslo provides a modeling tool called the Quadrant Model Editor for creating and browsing through the data objects.
• The Repository – Is the database portion of Oslo, where all the data models are stored. It also provides pre-built domains which are templates for various type of data projects optimized out of the box.

While this was initially designed as a BPM tool, it now encompasses a lot more with its additional features for data modeling and querying.  It just seems that it may seem a bit too much and complicated for business analysts who want to capture requirements using a BMP tool.  It does appear that this may be a cool tool for DBAs or Programmers who need better ways of data modeling. For more information on OSLO, start here with an overview of the M language . For your viewing entertainment see the video below featuring Paul Vick a member of the OSLO team pitching the product on a Microsoft talkshow. Enjoy and leave comments please.