A main trend in CP is to define a standard modeling language. This challenge is not a minor matter whose success may depend on many years of experimental steps. Several concerns must be studied such as the simplicity, the level of expressiveness and a suitable solver-independent architecture. In this paper we introduce the s-COMMA modeling language and its execution platform. In this approach a constraint language including extension mechanisms has been carefully fused with object-oriented capabilities in order to provide a considerable level of expressiveness and simplicity. The system is supported by a solver-independent three-layered architecture where models can be mapped to many solvers. We believe the work done on s-COMMA represents a concrete step on the pursuit of a standard constraint modeling language. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.