Cω

Cω

Paradigm(s)	multi-paradigm: structured, imperative, object-oriented, event-driven, functional
Appeared in	2003
Designed by	Microsoft Research and Microsoft SQL Server WebData team
Developer	Microsoft Research and Microsoft SQL Server WebData team
Stable release	1.0.2/October 28, 2004; 7 years ago (2004-10-28) (October 28, 2004; 7 years ago (2004-10-28))
Typing discipline	static, strong, safe
Influenced by	C#, Polyphonic C#
Influenced	LINQ, Joins Concurrency Library
OS	Cross-platform
Website	Microsoft Research page

Cω (pronounced "cee omega";^[1] usually written "Cw" or "Comega") is a free extension to the C# programming language, developed by the WebData team in Microsoft SQL Server in collaboration with Microsoft Research in the UK and Redmond. It was formerly known as the codenames "X#" (X Sharp) and "Xen". It was renamed Cω after Polyphonic C#, another research language based on Join calculus, was integrated into it.

Cω attempts to make datastores (such as databases and XML documents) accessible with the same ease and type safety as traditional types like strings and arrays. Many of these ideas were inherited from an earlier incubation project within the WebData XML team called X# and Xen. Cω also includes new constructs to support concurrent programming; these features were largely derived from the earlier Polyphonic C# project.

Available now as a compiler preview, Cω's features have been used in the creation of the LINQ extensions in C#.^[2] The concurrency constructs have also been released in a slightly modified form as a library, named Joins Concurrency Library, for C# and other .NET languages by Microsoft Research.^[3]

References

1. ^ "Comega Home". Microsoft Research. http://research.microsoft.com/Comega/. Retrieved 2008-08-12. 
2. ^ Concepts behind the C# 3.0 language | Articles | TomasP.Net
3. ^ "The Joins Concurrency Library". http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?type=inproceedings&id=2005. Retrieved 2007-06-08. 

External links

• Overview on MSDN
• Cω home page
• Microsoft Research Home Page
• Joins Concurrency Library