Longhorn--RoadMap or decoy.

At this years Professional Developers Conference (PDC) Microsoft unveiled details of Longhorn, a replacement for XP. If Microsoft is to be believed it is going to deliver a host of services and applications as part of Longhorn, some bearing exotic names. All this in 2005. Since substantial updates to XP are due in 2004 it is clear that anyone following the Roadmap XP to Longhorn is going to have to find the money not only to pay Microsoft but also the developers to manage the implementation within an enterprise. The list of Longhorn components is substantial, including Longhorn, Avalon, ClickOnce, Indigo, Superfetch, Whidbey, WinFS, WinFix, and Yukon. If the past record of Microsoft is anything to go by by 2005 this list may have changed substantially. The Editor

YUKON

SQL Server YUKON will it is claimed increase developer productivity by giving them a choice of language and providing strong XML support which enables them to store their own models and interface with existing relational databases, while providing MS the flexibility to build on the next generation XML architecture. Yukon achieves this by integrating the CLR in the database, and using Visual Studio as the development environment. The integration and native support of XML is claimed to make SQL Yukon beta1 up to 10 times more powerful both as a database engine and a development platform. The first public beta of Yukon is to take place in the first half of next year, and general availability in the second half.

AVALON

Avalon,is a new (API)-application programming interface framework, and the vital component in the Longhorn user interface, in which users will organise and share information on an intuitive basis, and in which files would be organised on a conceptual basis. The ultimate object is to provide a means by which the most relevant information would be accessed in the shortest possible time.

Developers will be able to access its capabilities through the XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) as well as through object orientated languages such as C#. In practice Avalon applications will be a mix of languages

INDIGO

Indigo is a set of .Net technologies for building and running interconnected systems, and is a new breed of communications infrastructure built around the Webservices architecture. It unifies distributed systems covering transports, security systems, messaging patterns, encoding network topologies and hosting models. It will be supported on Windows XP and Server 2003 and will be integrated with COM+,MSMQ,and ASP.NET Web services. Indigo is built on the principle of service-oriented development a concept based on : A service.... a program that other programs interact with using messages. A client........ which is a program that makes services usable to people, and..... a connected system, which is a collection of inter-connected services and clients. With service orientation, applications running on different platforms and programmed using different development programs can fully interoperate. In addition application developers and system integrators do not require specific knowledge of the underlying object, type systems, models and protocols of the software being integrated. Instead, all applications expose their services using standards-based protocols of the software being integrated.

Indigo is part of Windows Longhorn and is available to every Longhorn application. It will also be available as a separate download for Windows XP and Server 2003.

WINFS

The WinFS storage platform in Longhorn with SQL Server running on top is designed to categorise information in multiple ways and relate one item of information to another, a key function for Web Services. Inheriting information from one item to another across all applications connected to the operating system is at the core of the WinFS data model.