Could Microsoft be working behind the scenes on another new programming language?

A company official dropped hints at last week's XML 2002 conference in Baltimore that Microsoft is considering the potential for a language that would be optimized to handle data.

One source close to the company said that Microsoft has held internal discussions to kick around ideas for XML-specific language, referred to internally as "X#."

Microsoft .Net Software Architect Don Box set the scene for such a language last week during his XML 2002 keynote address.

"Languages need to evolve or die," said Box. "XML and Web services push data manipulation into mainstream programming. But current language substrates are optimized for objects, not data."

Box noted that "if we just make Web services look like CORBA, we will be missing a big opportunity." CORBA, the Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker Architecture, is a head-to-head competitor with Microsoft's own Component Object Model, or COM, technology.

Box went on to call the development of a "data-oriented language" one of the "most interesting areas for innovation in the next five years." He said that Microsoft and other software development houses were beginning to explore this area.

"C, C++, Java, etc. are very much tied to the concept of objects, components, functions, etc.," said Ron Schmelzer, a senior analyst with ZapThink LLC, a Waltham, Mass.-based Web services consultancy. "XML and Web Services don't have these notions, so these existing languages, or the newer versions of the .Net languages need to evolve to capture the data manipulation aspects of XML and Web Services rather than the object/compiled aspects."

Microsoft introduced its most recent new language, Visual C# a couple of years ago. C# got its start as the skunk-works COOL effort that Microsoft positioned as a head-to-head competitor with Java. Microsoft is spending considerable time and money on developing new apps from scratch in C#, as well as on convincing customers and partners to do the same.