Longhorn: Can Microsoft Deliver on Its Promises This Time?
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When Microsoft slips the covers off Longhorn this week at its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in Los Angeles, don't expect to see a polished desktop client ready to deliver intuitive, simplified computing to the masses. After all, Microsoft still has three more years to hone the final fit and finish for its next-generation Windows release. Instead, expect to hear lots about Longhorn's guts. The PDC audience is developers — about 9,000 strong, according to early estimates — and Microsoft is going to play to its attendees. At the PDC, Microsoft brass is set to explain how the company is evolving three of its flagship products: Windows "Longhorn"; SQL Server "Yukon"; and Visual Studio "Whidbey." But as Microsoft is and will be known as the Windows company (at least for the foreseeable future), Longhorn is expected to be the star of the show. Check Out Our PDC Special Report for the Latest from LA There will be plenty of new developer fodder around Longhorn. But for some programmers who have been in the trenches for a while, a number of the "new" Longhorn features may seem quite familiar. Remember the Object File System (OFS) and Storage+? Sure sounds a lot like the forthcoming Windows File System (WinFS). Does Forms+ ring a bell? It might, when Microsoft details its "Avalon" presentation-graphics subsystem at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week. And who can forget the "Hailstorm" personal Web services infrastructure that Microsoft launched in 2001 and shelved, due to negative customer feedback, a year later? Hailstorm never really went away; a lot of the promised services will be baked into Longhorn and make use of the new "Indigo" Web-services programming model.
Read "From Cairo to Longhorn: The Quest for a Well-Defined API" Just like Cairo, Longhorn — in the form it exists today (in documentation and pre-beta builds) — is an extremely ambitious project. One insider says that Microsoft has outlined 700 new features that it hopes to deliver via Longhorn. Microsoft is basically redoing Windows from the ground (the Win32 application programming interface layer), on up. And in the brave, new Longhorn world, .Net will become the heart of the Windows programming model. Internally, Microsoft has grouped its Longhorn enhancements into seven buckets. They are:
Based on previously disclosed information, the crux of Longhorn is WinFS, the data store that will allow users to search for and retrieve data and information wherever it is stored (locally, on an Intranet; or on the Internet) Elements of Hailstorm will likely figure into Microsoft's Longhorn data storage/management strategy, as well. Microsoft folded its Hailstorm (a k a ".Net My Services") development team into the Windows team over a year ago. Hailstorm developers had been writing Web services such as .Net Contacts (a repository for contact information); .Net Documents (a service for storing and managing online files and folders); .Net Presence (a service for tracking the location of a user of a particular device or machine), etc. It won't be all "Back to the Future" for Microsoft. As Redmond continues to evolve its Windows one-offs, like Windows Media Center Edition and Tablet PC Edition, new features and functionality from these releases is finding its way back into the Windows core code base. As a result, a number of more futuristic technologies, like digitally-inked instant messages and consumer-focused "scenarios," like P2P-style photo-sharing and group shopping trips over the Internet, will become part of the Longhorn experience by the time the Longhorn "wave" crests in 2006, too. But for this week, at least, it's all about developers, developers, developers. Get ready for a geek fest on steroids. |
