Longhorn details emerge

InfoWorld | at | by Mike

Details are emerging about Microsoft's plans for Longhorn, its forthcoming Windows operating system upgrade.  A list of the key subsystems upon which Microsoft is said to be basing Longhorn has been posted on a Microsoft Longhorn forum. The list is based on a document - a 1,000 page "Book of Longhorn" - that is circulating internally at Microsoft.

According to the posting, the book is divided into the following seven sections:

  • Aero, the 3D-rendering user interface
  • Trustworthy Computing and Security, which, in Longhorn's case, will consist largely of the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, or "Palladium" code

 

  • Avalon, the core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling graphics and presentations
  • Indigo, the next release of Microsoft's Web-services infrastructure that will underlie the OS; .NET Remoting + MSMQ + ASMX + .NET Enterprise Services (COM+)
  • WinFS, the Windows File System data-store that Longhorn will borrow from Microsoft's SQL Server "Yukon" database. It will be able to store XML and metadata in a single place
  • Real-time communications and speech. The instant-messaging, P2P technology and the core speech API that will be built into the platform
  • Fundamentals: Integrated workflow capabilities; rights management; perhaps even the good old .NET Framework.