M is Dead, Long Live M

Years ago I had the privilege of doing some SDR’s with the team developing a toolset code name “Oslo” using a new language named ‘M’. The concept was to bring modelling of data and visualisation of data to all. Sadly the retirement of Oslo the day before a presentation I was to give was a sad day and the passing of the visualisation tool Quadrant sadder still.

However all is not lost, Data visualisation is a keen topic for me and recently I have been spending more and more time with the awesome PowerBI tools for Excel. As it turns out a chance meeting with some of the original team hinted that I should look at Power Query. The Power Query Formula Language used to allow Queries built by the user to be both repeatable and sharable. As this was the key tenant of the M language, it shouldn't really come as a surprise that the PQFL is really M.

If you are interested and lets be honest who wouldn't be, Reference for M and PQFL is available here.

B.