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Longhorn lowdown: What's up?

Robert W. McLaws Tech Republic

Published: 17 Nov 2004 14:50 GMT

Unless you've been in a cave somewhere, you've probably heard that Microsoft has made some changes to the next version of Windows. If you're like most, you're probably wondering what this means for application developers. It probably seems like a long way off, but the announcements made earlier this month will have an effect on your development a lot sooner than you think. Here's a brief overview of what's changed, and what you can look forward to in the near future.

Waiting for WinFS
Two columns walk into the Longhorn bar at the bottom of Whistler Mountain. They are talking among themselves, not paying attention to the people in the room. They sit down, and are surprised to see someone they were told had died earlier that day. The one column, Indigo, looks at the other column, Avalon, in shock. The third, named WinFS and obviously unharmed, puts down its glass of brandy, smiling smugly while saying, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

The removal of WinFS from Longhorn's initial release had even the most respected developers screaming, "Cairo!" But just because it's not going to be in the initial release doesn't mean it's not going to be in there at some point. WinFS will be great, when it is finally ready. It's not one of those "can be mediocre until V2" products. Microsoft can't trip on this one out of the starting block.

Now, Microsoft won't officially comment on a specific release scenario or ship date, but this author has a few predictions. First, you're probably going to see WinFS ship at the same time as Longhorn Server, which will probably be named Windows Server 2007. At that time, they'll have a client installer as well.

From that point, you'll probably see WinFS on Longhorn Client by default either in a Longhorn Service Pack 1, or in a Longhorn re-release à la Windows Server 2003 R2. Microsoft has seen success with their out-of-band releases on that platform, like Active Directory Application Mode or Identity Integration Server 2003. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the same strategy again on the client-side.