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Microsoft Lifts Curtain on Indigo Software
daria42 writes "Microsoft has released an early version of Indigo on the Microsoft Developer Network. Indigo is a new communications system intended to let Windows programs more easily connect to other software. Indigo was one of the three original "pillars" of Longhorn, however under the new plan it will be re-tooled to work with Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, in addition to Longhorn."
Is it me or nothing MS is pitching in Longhorn sounds that exciting? A new version of COM+, wow how exciting!
For ONCE, I want a newer version of Windows to be faster and smaller than the previous version and more stable as well.
This, Avalon, and WinFS are all jokeworthy now, but at least one of these if not all of them will see decent implementation in GNU/Linux three to five years after they're being used in Longhorn, at which point Microsoft will have the replacement ready for release.
It might even have a better interface than Apple, spawning a whole new series of Longhorn themes for X-Windows.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
No, it uses Web Services, and standardised security (WS-Security).
For a great many users, that "$499 Upgrade" will ship installed on their new $500 Dell.
Admit it... you don't know much about windows, do you? Log into windows XP SP2 (or for bonus points Windows 2003) as a Limited user account (read: Not Administrator), and write me a program that can modify low-level features of the machine, or any system configuration for that matter (outside the config specific for your user). You can't. Windows has robust Access Control system (more granular than many standard linux distros that depend on unix filesystem perms for security [yes i know patched kernels exist with ACLs, which is great]).
It's just a pity that the managers for XP chose to have everyone run as Administrator so as not to confuse grandma. Thankfully, Longhorn will, out of the box, make your desktop account non-admin.
This started out as practically a greenfield project within MS with a brand new team at least five years ago. It's being done by incredibly competent people, and they have done a huge amount of work on interoperability issues- that whole raft of WS standards represents solutions to a whole range of issues that no else is really confronting. And I'm not saying they've solved them in an ideal way but as long as no one else puts anything out there that is less proprietary, they will jump out in front here. Remember how they eventually "got" the Internet?
Those of us who love F/OSS and Linux need to be less dismissive and more frightened.
MS is fragmented and balkanized internally but there are pockets of real capability. Web Services have not achieved anywhere near the level of adoption they could/should have by now (to all you trolls: the few dozen desultory SOAP projects at your company prove my point, not disprove it). And that's because of lack of "security," which boils down to lack of widely supported standards. We gotta be more proactive about this, and not make the same mistakes we are making in regard to Avalon.