On the first day of the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference (PDC) 2003, held last fall in Los Angeles, Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates spoke about a new version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, calling it "the most important OS release since Windows 95." He wasn't kidding about the significance of this release. Longhorn's feature set is a radical departure from all previous Windows versions and includes a new UI, which Figure 1 shows; a completely 3-D display model; major security upgrades; significant reliability enhancements; and a new file system that features database capabilities. Although Gates hasn't provided an explicit release date, we can expect to see Longhorn begin rolling out in 2006. Conference attendees received a set of DVDs containing a pre-beta Longhorn preview, which I've been testing for the past couple of months.
Like every previous Windows release, Longhorn is based on Microsoft's assessment that the speed and power of both desktop and server PCs will continue to increase according to Moore's Law—that is, speed and capacity will double approximately every 18 months. However, Longhorn's single most radical feature—a new, databaselike file system called WinFS—arises from the observation that disk capacity is actually growing faster than Moore's Law predicts. According to Gates, the capacity of typical hard disks is now tripling every 18 months. Based on this observation, he expects that typical desktop PCs will have terabyte hard disks within this decade.
WinFS: NTFS on Steroids
WinFS is essentially a new layer between the UI (or API) and the familiar NTFS file system. The new layer is built on a new release—code-named Yukon—of the Microsoft SQL Server database engine. What looks to the user like a search of the file system is actually a query against the database.
One illustration of the power of WinFS appears in the self-guided tour that the PDC Longhorn documentation features. The tour instructs you to copy tracks from several music CDs into a special WinFS Music folder. Then, you can select music according to metadata such as artist, title, or genre. As Figure 1 shows, collections of related tracks appear as stacks of paper within the folder. As you execute a query against the Music folder (e.g., by typing the name of an artist), the stacks of paper become visibly smaller. This feature lets you manage vast amounts of information relatively easily.
Of course, WinFS manages much more than just music. WinFS provides extensible schemas that a variety of applications can use: A whole series of PDC demonstrations was built around a fictional law office's database of legal briefs that had metadata tags assigned for information such as the client, lawyer, and judge. A legal secretary could then, for example, easily slice and dice briefs by lawyer or client.
WinFS also defines schemas for contacts and calendar entries. Microsoft strongly recommends that developers use these standard schemas rather than storing contact and calendar data in separate, incompatible files. Using these schemas, users (and IT departments) will be able to enjoy the benefits of centralized storage of common data, rather than live with today's scenarios of separate network users, external email addresses, and buddy lists.
Best of all, Longhorn implements WinFS on top of NTFS. WinFS exists as a set of data-related APIs that takes advantage of base operating services, including a transacted version of NTFS. As such, WinFS inherits all the advanced features we've come to expect from NTFS, including support for disk arrays, volume sets, and offline media.
More Features
Longhorn also delivers a new communications model—code-named Indigo—that enables advanced Web services. Indigo should be invisible to end users but is an important component of the plumbing underneath applications—particularly network applications. Indigo attempts to unify most of the disparate methods programmers use to write network services, merging features that currently exist in ASMX, ASP.NET, and separate Enterprise Services, such as Microsoft Message Queuing (MSMQ).
Indigo provides built-in security and standardized messaging and will exploit predefined contacts and calendar schemas to provide a programmatic notion of "presence" for both peer-to-peer (P2P) and enterprise applications. And because Microsoft developed Indigo on a transactional model, it's inherently scalable. Better still, Microsoft has announced that in addition to supporting Indigo in Longhorn, it will make Indigo APIs and services available in an add-on for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP.
Other features planned for Longhorn include an elimination of reboots after application installation (something Microsoft has been promising since before Windows NT 4.0) and the introduction of single-click application setup—you simply copy the application files. (Even that step isn't necessary for users—Longhorn offers an option to incrementally autoinstall an application the first time a user clicks its icon.) Users can also install Longhorn applications without administrative privileges. To speed up the boot process, Longhorn uses Superfetch technology—essentially, smart disk caching of often used files.
To enhance reliability, Microsoft is building a set of features collectively referred to as "a flight recorder for Longhorn." These features include system application tracking, the use of nonvolatile memory for fast reboot, and automatic driver verification.
Microsoft is also taking security seriously in Longhorn. The pre-beta version changes the default setting for Internet Connection Firewall (ICF) to On for all network interfaces. This new setting shows up when you try to ping a machine running the Longhorn pre-beta from any other computer on your network: ICF blocks the system from responding to Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) Ping requests until (and unless) you modify the appropriate setting on the Advanced tab of each network connection's Properties page. Other security features in Longhorn include integration with Palladium-hardware-enhanced security and page locking to prevent execution of memory pages on 64-bit CPUs.
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