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Business Intelligence Markup Language

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Business Intelligence Markup Language (BIML) is a domain-specific XML dialect for defining business intelligence (BI) assets. Biml-authored BI assets can currently be used by the BIDS Helper add-on for Microsoft SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and the Varigence Mist (now called BimlStudio) integrated development environment ; both tools translate Biml metadata into SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) assets for the Microsoft SQL Server platform; however, emitters can be created to compile Biml for any desired BI platform.

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50-452: While Biml’s declarative design is sufficient to author BI assets, BimlScript extends the language by enabling authors to embed C# or VB.NET code within Biml, similar to how ASP.NET includes .NET code within static HTML markup. BimlScript is used to merge changes into existing Biml assets, automatically generate Biml code, and apply changes across multiple Biml files during compilation. Mist

100-444: A free and open-source project called Mono began, providing a cross-platform compiler and runtime environment for the C# programming language. A decade later, Microsoft released Visual Studio Code (code editor), Roslyn (compiler), and the unified .NET platform (software framework), all of which support C# and are free, open-source, and cross-platform. Mono also joined Microsoft but

150-422: A semitone higher in pitch . This is similar to the language name of C++ , where "++" indicates that a variable should be incremented by 1 after being evaluated. The sharp symbol also resembles a ligature of four "+" symbols (in a two-by-two grid), further implying that the language is an increment of C++. Due to technical limits of display (standard fonts, browsers, etc.), and most keyboard layouts lacking

200-420: A backing field, or implement arbitrary getter and setter functions. A property is read-only if there's no setter. Like with fields, there can be class and instance properties. The underlying methods can be virtual or abstract like any other method. Since C# 3.0 the syntactic sugar of auto-implemented properties is available, where the accessor (getter) and mutator (setter) encapsulate operations on

250-419: A class can implement any number of " interfaces " (fully abstract classes). This was a design decision by the language's lead architect to avoid complications and to simplify architectural requirements throughout CLI. When implementing multiple interfaces that contain a method with the same name and taking parameters of the same type in the same order (i.e. the same signature ), similar to Java , C# allows both

300-632: A common declaration Biml has a well-defined set of root types, indicating the various kinds of BI assets that can be created: This is an example of the AdventureWorks DimCurrency table, authored in Biml: All BimlScript tags begin and end with <# and #> delimiters, respectively. Special types of BimlScript tags use augmented versions of these delimiters, to indicate specific usages. A Biml file, with BimlScript, begins with at least one directive. Directives provide instructions to

350-469: A database, parsing an XML file, or searching through a data structure, shifting the emphasis onto the actual program logic to help improve readability and maintainability. C# used to have a mascot called Andy (named after Anders Hejlsberg ). It was retired on January 29, 2004. C# was originally submitted to the ISO/IEC JTC 1 subcommittee SC 22 for review, under ISO/IEC 23270:2003, was withdrawn and

400-603: A function (i.e. hiding the former implementation). To do the latter, you have to specify the new keyword. Extension methods in C# allow programmers to use static methods as if they were methods from a class's method table, allowing programmers to virtually add instance methods to a class that they feel should exist on that kind of objects (and instances of the respective derived classes). The type dynamic allows for run-time method binding, allowing for JavaScript-like method calls and run-time object composition . C# has support for strongly-typed function pointers via

450-526: A guideline for informing consumers about the environmental practices of the manufacturers of ICT and consumer electronics products. The IT Eco Declaration includes information on the environmental practices of the manufacturer as well as product features, such as environmentally conscious design, batteries, acoustic noise, electrical safety, energy consumption, chemical emissions, substances and materials included, and packaging. This makes it easy to compare different suppliers and their products, as they all present

500-419: A pointer to the respective object. Due to their special handling of the equality operator, strings will nevertheless behave as if they were values, for all practical purposes. You can even use them as case labels. Where necessary, value types will be boxed automatically. C# supports a strict Boolean data type , bool . Statements that take conditions, such as while and if , require an expression of

550-577: A sharp symbol ( U+266F ♯ MUSIC SHARP SIGN ( &sharp; )), the number sign ( U+0023 # NUMBER SIGN ( &num; )) was chosen to approximate the sharp symbol in the written name of the programming language. This convention is reflected in the ECMA-334 C# Language Specification. The "sharp" suffix has been used by a number of other .NET languages that are variants of existing languages, including J# (a .NET language also designed by Microsoft that

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600-434: A single attribute of a class. A C# namespace provides the same level of code isolation as a Java package or a C++ namespace , with very similar rules and features to a package . Namespaces can be imported with the "using" syntax. In C#, memory address pointers can only be used within blocks specifically marked as unsafe , and programs with unsafe code need appropriate permissions to run. Most object access

650-496: A single method to cover all interfaces and if necessary specific methods for each interface. However, unlike Java, C# supports operator overloading . C# also offers function overloading (a.k.a. ad-hoc-polymorphism). Since version 2.0, C# offers parametric polymorphism , i.e. classes with arbitrary or constrained type parameters, e.g. List<T> , a variable-sized array which only can contain elements of type T . There are certain kinds of constraints you can specify for

700-508: A team to build a new language at the time called Cool, which stood for " C-like Object Oriented Language". Microsoft had considered keeping the name "Cool" as the final name of the language, but chose not to do so for trademark reasons. By the time the .NET project was publicly announced at the July 2000 Professional Developers Conference , the language had been renamed C#, and the class libraries and ASP.NET runtime had been ported to C#. Hejlsberg

750-611: A type that implements the true operator, such as the Boolean type. While C++ also has a Boolean type, it can be freely converted to and from integers, and expressions such as if (a) require only that a is convertible to bool, allowing a to be an int, or a pointer. C# disallows this "integer meaning true or false" approach, on the grounds that forcing programmers to use expressions that return exactly bool can prevent certain types of programming mistakes such as if (a = b) (use of assignment = instead of equality == ). C#

800-685: Is "not a Java clone" and is "much closer to C++" in its design. Since the release of C# 2.0 in November 2005, the C# and Java languages have evolved on increasingly divergent trajectories, becoming two quite different languages. One of the first major departures came with the addition of generics to both languages, with vastly different implementations. C# makes use of reification to provide "first-class" generic objects that can be used like any other class, with code generation performed at class-load time. Furthermore, C# has added several major features to accommodate functional-style programming, culminating in

850-404: Is C#'s principal designer and lead architect at Microsoft, and was previously involved with the design of Turbo Pascal , Embarcadero Delphi (formerly CodeGear Delphi, Inprise Delphi and Borland Delphi), and Visual J++ . In interviews and technical papers, he has stated that flaws in most major programming languages (e.g. C++ , Java , Delphi , and Smalltalk ) drove the fundamentals of

900-594: Is a nonprofit standards organization for information and communication systems. It acquired its current name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association ( ECMA ) changed its name to reflect the organization's global reach and activities. As a consequence, the name is no longer considered an acronym and no longer uses full capitalization. The organization was founded in 1961 to standardize computer systems in Europe. Membership

950-446: Is a member of a class that can be invoked as a function (a sequence of instructions), rather than the mere value-holding capability of a field (i.e. class or instance variable ). As in other syntactically similar languages, such as C++ and ANSI C , the signature of a method is a declaration comprising in order: any optional accessibility keywords (such as private ), the explicit specification of its return type (such as int , or

1000-579: Is a membership-based organization. It takes pride in the resulting "business-like" approach to standards, claimed to lead to better standards in less time, thanks to a less bureaucratic process focused on achieving results by consensus . Ecma has actively contributed to worldwide standardization in information technology and telecommunications. More than 400 Ecma Standards and 100 Technical Reports have been published, more than 2 ⁄ 3 of which have also been adopted as international standards and/or technical reports. The memberlist of Ecma International

1050-492: Is an IDE for authoring Biml code and building BI assets. Mist leverages visual design capabilities and debugging features to simultaneously edit entire business intelligence models, including relational tables, SSIS packages, and cubes . Mist also incorporates modern programming IDE features, including text editors with syntax highlighting, Intelliprompt and quick-info displays, source control integration, and multi-monitor support. As Biml’s popularity has grown, key portions of

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1100-401: Is available on its website. Its members include IT companies, IT trade associations, universities, foundations and public institutions. Ecma International is responsible for several standards, including: Although Sun Microsystems submitted its Java programming language to Ecma, Sun subsequently withdrew the submission. Thus, Ecma is not responsible for the standardization of Java. Ecma

1150-413: Is derived from Java 1.1), A# (from Ada ), and the functional programming language F# . The original implementation of Eiffel for .NET was called Eiffel#, a name retired since the full Eiffel language is now supported. The suffix has also been used for libraries , such as Gtk# (a .NET wrapper for GTK and other GNOME libraries) and Cocoa# (a wrapper for Cocoa ). The core syntax of

1200-455: Is done through safe object references, which always either point to a "live" object or have the well-defined null value; it is impossible to obtain a reference to a "dead" object (one that has been garbage collected), or to a random block of memory. An unsafe pointer can point to an instance of an unmanaged value type that does not contain any references to objects subject to garbage collections such as class instances, arrays or strings. Code that

1250-627: Is involved in the standardization of the Office Open XML format based on the XML office document formats by Microsoft . The Ecma Office Open XML maintenance process is performed by technical committee 45 (TC45). The Ecma standards are governed through technical committees assigned to particular areas or topics, such as: In Ecma International Standard 370, Ecma joined with the Scandinavian IT Eco Declaration organisation to put forward

1300-740: Is more type safe than C++. The only implicit conversions by default are those that are considered safe, such as widening of integers. This is enforced at compile-time, during JIT , and, in some cases, at runtime. No implicit conversions occur between Booleans and integers, nor between enumeration members and integers (except for literal 0, which can be implicitly converted to any enumerated type). Any user-defined conversion must be explicitly marked as explicit or implicit, unlike C++ copy constructors and conversion operators, which are both implicit by default. C# has explicit support for covariance and contravariance in generic types, unlike C++ which has some degree of support for contravariance simply through

1350-486: Is not marked as unsafe can still store and manipulate pointers through the System.IntPtr type, but it cannot dereference them. Managed memory cannot be explicitly freed; instead, it is automatically garbage collected. Garbage collection addresses the problem of memory leaks by freeing the programmer of responsibility for releasing memory that is no longer needed in most cases. Code that retains references to objects longer than

1400-451: Is open to large and small companies worldwide that produce, market, or develop computer or communication systems, and have interest and experience in the areas addressed by the group's technical bodies. It is located in Geneva . Ecma aims to develop standards and technical reports to facilitate and standardize the use of information communication technology and consumer electronics; encourage

1450-550: Is required can still experience higher memory usage than necessary, however once the final reference to an object is released the memory is available for garbage collection. A range of standard exceptions are available to programmers. Methods in standard libraries regularly throw system exceptions in some circumstances and the range of exceptions thrown is normally documented. Custom exception classes can be defined for classes allowing handling to be put in place for particular circumstances as needed. The syntax for handling exceptions

1500-482: Is the following: Depending on your plans, the "finally" part can be left out. If error handling is not required, the (Exception ex) parameter can be omitted as well. Also, there can be several "catch" parts handling different kinds of exceptions. Checked exceptions are not present in C# (in contrast to Java). This has been a conscious decision based on the issues of scalability and versionability. Unlike C++ , C# does not support multiple inheritance , although

1550-709: The IEnumerable<;T> interface is implemented on the object. This includes XML documents, an ADO.NET dataset, and SQL databases. + Using LINQ in C# brings advantages like IntelliSense support, strong filtering capabilities, type safety with compile error checking ability, and consistency for querying data over a variety of sources. There are several different language structures that can be utilized with C# and LINQ and they are query expressions, lambda expressions, anonymous types, implicitly typed variables, extension methods, and object initializers. Ecma International Ecma International ( / ˈ ɛ k m ə / )

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1600-524: The Common Language Runtime (CLR), which, in turn, drove the design of the C# language. James Gosling , who created the Java programming language in 1994, and Bill Joy , a co-founder of Sun Microsystems , the originator of Java, called C# an "imitation" of Java; Gosling further said that "[C# is] sort of Java with reliability, productivity and security deleted." In July 2000, Hejlsberg said that C#

1650-483: The LINQ extensions released with C# 3.0 and its supporting framework of lambda expressions , extension methods , and anonymous types . These features enable C# programmers to use functional programming techniques, such as closures , when it is advantageous to their application. The LINQ extensions and the functional imports help developers reduce the amount of boilerplate code that is included in common tasks like querying

1700-627: The Biml engine, including dynamic package generation, have been contributed to the BIDS Helper open source project hosted on CodePlex. BimlScript.com is a community website for developing and sharing Biml solutions to BI problems, and contributing Biml content to share with others. Along with tutorials, walkthroughs, and videos, the site provides an online Biml editor. Biml has a syntax that’s common to all XML languages. Tags begin and end with < and >, respectively. Furthermore, tags can have attributes and nested elements. Biml documents begin with

1750-494: The Biml engine, regarding how to process the BimlScript and generate its Biml. Directives are single tags that begin with <#@. Each directive begins with a single term, followed by attributes that supply required values. The two most common directives are template and import. This directive indicates that the file's BimlScript uses the C# programming language. This directive specifies .NET namespaces that should be imported for

1800-467: The C# language is similar to that of other C-style languages such as C, C++ and Java, particularly: Some notable features of C# that distinguish it from C, C++, and Java where noted, are: By design, C# is the programming language that most directly reflects the underlying Common Language Infrastructure  (CLI). Most of its intrinsic types correspond to value-types implemented by the CLI framework. However,

1850-473: The C# programming language were Anders Hejlsberg , Scott Wiltamuth, and Peter Golde from Microsoft . It was first widely distributed in July 2000 and was later approved as an international standard by Ecma (ECMA-334) in 2002 and ISO / IEC (ISO/IEC 23270 and 20619 ) in 2003. Microsoft introduced C# along with .NET Framework and Visual Studio , both of which were closed-source . At the time, Microsoft had no open-source products. Four years later, in 2004,

1900-605: The Schemas and Tables collections, respectively. This example shows how developers can use Biml and BimlScript to: C Sharp (programming language) C# ( / ˌ s iː ˈ ʃ ɑːr p / see SHARP ) is a general-purpose high-level programming language supporting multiple paradigms . C# encompasses static typing, strong typing , lexically scoped , imperative , declarative , functional , generic , object-oriented ( class -based), and component-oriented programming disciplines. The principal inventors of

1950-468: The calling site, and you can choose between ref and out , the latter allowing handing over an uninitialized variable which will have a definite value on return. Additionally, you can specify a variable-sized argument list by applying the params keyword to the last parameter. Certain specific kinds of methods, such as those that simply get or set a field's value by returning or assigning it, do not require an explicitly stated full signature, but in

2000-473: The correct use of standards by influencing the environment in which they are applied; and publish these standards and reports in electronic and printed form. Ecma publications, including standards, can be freely copied by all interested parties without copyright restrictions. The development of standards and technical reports is done in co-operation with the appropriate national, European, and international organizations. Unlike national standardization bodies, Ecma

2050-430: The file. It is functionally equivalent to the C# using statement or VB.NET Imports statement. When authoring BimlScript, additional delimiters may be used. These delimiters match the behavior of T4 template delimiters. This BimlScript example imports a database's assets via a connection, declared in a separate file, named "AdventureWorksLT". Each schema and table from the imported database is then embedded directly within

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2100-404: The general case, the definition of a class includes the full signature declaration of its methods. Like C++, and unlike Java, C# programmers must use the scope modifier keyword virtual to allow methods to be overridden by subclasses. Unlike C++, you have to explicitly specify the keyword override when doing so. This is supposed to avoid confusion between overriding and newly overloading

2150-523: The keyword delegate . Like the Qt framework's pseudo-C++ signal and slot , C# has semantics specifically surrounding publish-subscribe style events, though C# uses delegates to do so. C# offers Java-like synchronized method calls, via the attribute [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.Synchronized)] , and has support for mutually-exclusive locks via the keyword lock . C# supports classes with properties . The properties can be simple accessor functions with

2200-402: The keyword var , and implicitly typed arrays with the keyword new[] followed by a collection initializer. Its type system is split into two families: Value types, like the built-in numeric types and user-defined structs, which are automatically handed over as copies when used as parameters, and reference types, including arrays, instances of classes, and strings, which only hand over

2250-403: The keyword void if no value is returned), the name of the method, and finally, a parenthesized sequence of comma-separated parameter specifications, each consisting of a parameter's type, its formal name and optionally, a default value to be used whenever none is provided. Different from most other languages, call-by-reference parameters have to be marked both at the function definition and at

2300-432: The language specification does not state the code generation requirements of the compiler: that is, it does not state that a C# compiler must target a Common Language Runtime, or generate Common Intermediate Language (CIL), or generate any other specific format. Some C# compilers can also generate machine code like traditional compilers of C++ or Fortran . C# supports strongly, implicitly typed variable declarations with

2350-473: The semantics of return types on virtual methods. Enumeration members are placed in their own scope . The C# language does not allow for global variables or functions. All methods and members must be declared within classes. Static members of public classes can substitute for global variables and functions. Local variables cannot shadow variables of the enclosing block, unlike C and C++. Metaprogramming can be achieved in several ways: A method in C#

2400-413: The type parameters: Has to be type X ( or one derived from it ), has to implement a certain interface, has to be a reference type, has to be a value type, has to implement a public parameterless constructor . Most of them can be combined, and you can specify any number of interfaces. C# has the ability to utilize LINQ through the .NET Framework. A developer can query a variety of data sources, provided

2450-416: Was not merged into .NET. As of November 2024, the most recent stable version of the language is C# 13.0, which was released in 2024 in .NET 9.0. The Ecma standard lists these design goals for C#: During the development of the .NET Framework , the class libraries were originally written using a managed code compiler system named Simple Managed C (SMC). In January 1999, Anders Hejlsberg formed

2500-429: Was then approved under ISO/IEC 23270:2006. The 23270:2006 is withdrawn under 23270:2018 and approved with this version. Microsoft first used the name C# in 1988 for a variant of the C language designed for incremental compilation. That project was not completed, and the name was later reused. The name "C sharp" was inspired by the musical notation whereby a sharp symbol indicates that the written note should be made

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