Security and Web integration key to Longhorn

LOS ANGELES -- Microsoft Corp. let loose early bits of Longhorn at its Professional Developer Conference (PDC) here and for the first time provided more extensive details around the key components of its next Windows operating system expected out in 2006.

Though Microsoft repeated that it would release a server version of Longhorn, the company would only discuss the client operating system. It is early days for the Longhorn client and way too early for the Longhorn server, Microsoft officials said here.

Longhorn is build up of three components on top of a layer of "fundamentals" that includes security and technology to make sure applications and drivers don't conflict. On top of those fundamentals sit Avalon, WinFS and Indigo, the codenames that with the Longhorn name itself have fed the rumor mills for the past years.

Avalon is the presentation subsystem of Longhorn, WinFS is the unified storage system built on top of Windows' existing file system NTFS, and Indigo combines all Windows communication technologies.

Microsoft officials, visibly happy that they could now talk about what they have been working on in secrecy, provided lengthy and deeply technical explanations of the technology behind the codenames. To be brief, Longhorn promises to give users a secure operating system with a new way to store files, revamped graphics and tight links to the Web.

For software developers, the operating system, though bringing a myriad of changes, should be easier to develop for and it will also run existing applications, dating all the way back to the days of DOS, the disk operating system.

Other than security and conflict prevention, the Longhorn fundamentals will also offer technology called SuperFetch that helps start an application faster, ClickOnce that makes it easy to install applications on a single PC or across a network, as well as technology that makes it easy to migrate from one machine to another, Microsoft Group Vice President Jim Allchin said in a keynote address on Monday.

"ClickOnce is the ability to just do an Xcopy, the equivalent of an Xcopy, to a machine," Allchin said.

Avalon, the Longhorn presentation system, had been little talked about until the PDC. With Avalon, Microsoft is leaving the bitmap behind it and is moving to vector-based graphics and a single graphics system. This promises better graphics and performance, said Darryn Dieken, group program manager for Windows client, speaking on Tuesday.

Today, Windows uses three different graphics APIs (application programming interfaces), to display video, two-dimensional or three-dimensional images, Dieken said. This slows down the system and requires software developers to write more code, which makes the system more error prone, he said.

Whether users will get the full benefits of Avalon will depend on the hardware, Dieken said. The new transparent windows feature, for example, will only work with hardware that is better than the average graphics card and processor in today's PCs, Dieken said.

Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates during his keynote Monday gave Microsoft's expectation of a PC in 2006. The PC is to sport a 4GHz to 6GHz processor with two cores, over 2GB of RAM, more than 1TB of disk storage, and a graphics processor three times as powerful as those found in today's PCs, he said.

Details on WinFS, the unified storage system for Longhorn, had leaked before PDC. However, some confusion about the technology Gates referred to as a "Holy Grail" was cleared up Tuesday. It is not a new file system, but the acronym nevertheless stands for Windows File System and not Windows Future Storage.

"We built WinFS on top of NTFS," said Gordon Mangione, corporate vice president for SQL Server at Microsoft , in a keynote presentation Tuesday. "We have 15 years investment in building streams on NTFS. ...There's no way we're going to throw all that out and start over again."

WinFS uses the relational engine technology that Microsoft also uses in Yukon, the next version of its SQL Server database due next year. The storage system promises to make it easier for users to find documents and e-mail messages, for example, by tagging those with XML (Extensible Markup Language) metadata.

WinFS data will no longer reside in specific folders on a hard disk drive. The "My Documents" icon on the desktop no longer opens a specific folder on the hard disk drive, but displays documents located anywhere on the system tagged with XML data. Also, certain data, such as the e-mail address book, will reside at the platform level, instead of at the application level, making it accessible from multiple applications, Microsoft said.

Existing Windows applications will work with systems running Longhorn. However, vendors will have to recode their applications if they want to take full advantage of WinFS and other Longhorn features, Microsoft officials said. The Redmond, Washington, software maker itself is planning a wave of new product releases in the Longhorn timeframe, including a new Office release.

Indigo has grown at PDC. Prior to the event, the definition was restricted to technology that enables Web services. Now Indigo stands for basically all of Windows' communications technologies, including peer-to-peer, instant messaging and Web services support, Microsoft officials said.

While Windows users will experience Avalon and WinFS first hand when Longhorn comes out, Indigo sits behind the scenes and is more interesting for developers of Windows applications.
"What we are doing is giving developers a higher level to make it less complex and more productive to write an application for Windows that communicates," said Steven Van Roekel, director of platform strategy at Microsoft. "Many of these technologies will be at a certain level an afterthought for end-users."

PDC attendees not only received a technical preview version of Longhorn, but also a Longhorn SDK (software development kit), Longhorn driver kit, and a preview of Whidbey, the next version of Microsoft's Visual Studio developer tools.

Allchin, who heads the Platforms group, also introduced a new application programming model at PDC called WinFX, the next step from Microsoft's .Net Framework model. WinFX offers improvements in security and reliability, while also allowing a developer to work more effectively, according to Allchin. He also announced XAML, a new markup language for Avalon.
Microsoft has not given a release date for Longhorn, but insiders expect the software to be out in 2006. A first beta of the product is planned for the third quarter of next year.