Gates shows off Longhorn at PDC

IDG News Service - Proclaiming that the "digital decade" is just dawning, Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates today gave the first official peek at Longhorn, the next version of Windows expected out in 2006.
Longhorn will be "the biggest release of this decade, the biggest since Windows 95," Gates said in his opening keynote at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
With Longhorn, Microsoft will introduce a unified storage system dubbed WinFS for Windows Future Storage. The unified file system is the Holy Grail for Gates. "I have been talking about it for over a decade, and finally here it is," he said
Used with a new engine underlying the Longhorn user interface code-named Avalon, WinFS should make it easier for users to find and organize files on their PCs. The familiar directories and folders will be replaced with XML metadata, allowing users to easily find documents that relate to a specific project or topic, or all communications with one person, for example.
Also, Longhorn will pull data out of the silos that are the individual applications, Gates said. Data will reside at the platform level, instead of at the application level. E-mail address book information, for example, will be accessible from multiple applications, instead of just from the e-mail client.
WinFS will be based on technology from Yukon, the code name for the next version of Microsoft's SQL Server database due out next year. "Until we had a lot of this database technology, we could not organize these things," Gates said.
Hillel Cooperman, product unit manager for the Windows user experience, demonstrated an early version of Longhorn. The user interface at first glance looked much like current Windows versions, though with transparent Windows and a transparent sidebar that includes a clock, instant messaging contacts list and other information.
Cooperman also demonstrated new features of the file system. 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. He displayed documents by project and sender.
Cooperman also opened a DOS application in Longhorn, demonstrating Microsoft's "over 20 years of commitment to interoperability."
Other enhancements in Longhorn will include the hardware-based security technology called Next-Generation Secure Computing Base and Indigo, the code name for a Web services technology. Indigo will connect applications on a system as well across networks, Gates said.
Software is what held back the digital decade in the past 10 years, according to Gates. "The expectations ofthe last decade required more time. It is simple to say where the constraint is in this era. ... It is software," not hardware, he said.
Conference attendees will get a CD with an early version of Longhorn. Microsoft has said a first beta is planned for next year but hasn't given an official release date for the product.
Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference runs until Oct. 30.