List of Microsoft codenames

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Microsoft codenames are the codenames given by Microsoft to products it has in development, before these products are given the names by which they appear on store shelves. Many of these products (new versions of Windows in particular) are of major significance to the IT community, and so the terms are often widely used in discussions prior to the official release. Microsoft usually does not announce a final name until shortly before the product is publicly available.

There has been some suggestion that Microsoft may move towards defining the real name of their upcoming products earlier in the product development lifecycle so as to avoid needing product codenames.^[1]

Contents 1 Windows 3.1x/9x 2 Windows NT family 3 Windows CE family 4 DirectX family 5 Visual Studio family 6 Exchange Server Family 7 SQL Server family 8 Experimental operating systems 9 Expression suite 10 .NET 11 MSN/Windows Live 12 Others 13 Toaster 14 References

 

Windows 3.1x/9x

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Janus		Windows 3.1
Kato, Sparta		Windows for Workgroups
Snowball (LB)		Windows for Workgroups 3.11
Chicago	Windows 4.0	Windows 95
O'Hare		Internet Explorer, first shipped in Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95	O'Hare is the main airport for the city of Chicago.
Frosting[2]		Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95
Detroit		Windows 95 OSR 2
Nashville	Windows 96	Windows Desktop Update, Internet Explorer 4.0	Cancelled upgrade for Windows 95; sometimes referred to in the press as Windows 96. Codename was reused for Internet Explorer 4.0 which incorporated many of the technologies planned for Nashville.
Memphis	Windows 97	Windows 98	The codename was the key to activating an easter egg in Windows 98: open the "Date and Time" control panel; go to the "Timezone" page; hold the Control key and drag a line with the mouse cursor from Memphis, Egypt (or maybe Cairo, codename of Windows NT 4 - the map is too small to tell) to Memphis, Tennessee. Still holding the Control key, drag another line from Memphis to Redmond, Washington; a window opens with the credits for Windows 98.
Dolly		Windows 98 OEM/Corporate image cloning utility
Georgia	Millennium	Windows Me

Windows NT family

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Daytona		Windows NT 3.5
Cairo, SUR (Shell Update Release)		Windows NT 4.0	Some of the original goals of Cairo were never achieved - such as an object file system, itself known as Cairo. Microsoft originally planned for NT 4.0 to be just a simple "Shell Update Release" to integrate the Windows 95 GUI with Windows NT 3.51's kernel.
Wolfpack		Cluster Server
Hydra		Terminal Services, Terminal Server	Terminal Server adds "multiheading" support to Windows (the ability to run multiple instances of the graphics subsystem), and the hydra is a mythological monster with multiple heads.
Impala		Windows NT 4.0 Embedded
	Windows NT 5.0	Windows 2000	A watershed in Windows naming: first major Windows release since Windows 2.0 without a codename; first major Windows NT release whose client variant was named "Professional" instead of "Workstation"; first major Windows NT release without the "NT" designation in the trade name, which caused confusion when Windows ME was released. The original Windows line (Windows 9x) has since been dropped altogether, and Windows NT operating systems since then are simply referred to as "Windows".
Asteroid		Windows 2000 Service Pack 1
Janus		Windows 2000 64-bit	Same codename as Windows 3.1
Odyssey		N/A	Ideas project, merged to Whistler.
Neptune		N/A	Ideas project, merged to Whistler.
Whistler	Windows .NET 2001	Windows XP	Merge of Whistler build 2202, Neptune and Project Odyssey. Named after Whistler, British Columbia, where design retreats were held.
Mantis		Windows XP Embedded
eHome		Windows XP Media Center Edition
Freestyle		Windows XP Media Center Edition 2003	Name of a terrain rating system in the Whistler-Blackcomb resort.
Harmony		Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004	Name of a ski lift and alpine bowl in Whistler, British Columbia.
Symphony		Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005	Name of an alpine bowl in Whistler, British Columbia.
Emerald		Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 Update Rollup 2	Name of a ski lift in Whistler, British Columbia.
Springboard		Windows XP Service Pack 2	Name of a ski run on Blackcomb in Whistler, British Columbia.
Lone Star		Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005	A branch of the Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 codebase, featuring enhancements specifically for Tablet PC hardware.
Whistler Server	Windows .NET Server	Windows Server 2003	One of many unrelated Microsoft projects of the time to carry a ".NET" designation. See: Microsoft .NET.
Bobcat		Windows Small Business Server 2003	Bobcat is a ski-run on Whistler Mountain.
Eiger		Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs	A low-end version of Windows XP that is intended to be a thin-client that works with older hardware. Available through Software Assurance program.
Mönch			Similar to Eiger, but supports Windows Mobile devices, Windows Image Acquisition, wireless networking, VPN-s and advanced IP (Internet Protocol) security.
Longhorn		Windows Vista	Went golden (RTM) on 8 of November 2006. Named after the Longhorn Bar in the Whistler-Blackcomb resort; initially planned as an "interim release" between "Whistler" and "Blackcomb" (which is now "Vienna").
Cougar	Windows Small Business Server "Longhorn"		In development. Cougar is a ski-run on Whistler Mountain.
Longhorn Server	Windows Server "Longhorn"	Windows Server 2007	In development. Planned server edition of Vista to be released in 2007.
Centro			In development. Planned "mid-size" (25-500 PC) edition of Longhorn Server.[1].
Blackcomb, Vienna, Windows Seven		Originally codenamed "Blackcomb" after the Whistler-Blackcomb resort. Renamed to "Vienna" in January 2006.
Q, Quattro	Windows Home Server		In development. Announced at CES 2007. Original project codename was "Quattro" because it was the leader of the project's 4th attempt at building a home server at Microsoft. Renamed to Q once the project moved out of incubation stage.
Trainyard		Windows XP Service Pack 1	Trainyard was a engineering package of driver updates to ship simultaneously with Windows XP Service Pack 1, the most major of which was support for USB 2.0 which was also ported backwards to Windows 2000

Windows CE family

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Pegasus, Alder[3]		Windows CE 1.0	(released November 1996)
Mercury, Apollo		Windows CE 2.0	(released November 1997)
Birch[3], Gryphon		Windows CE 2.1
Wyvern, Jupiter, Orion, Hermes, Goldeneye		Windows CE 2.11
Cedar[3], Galileo, Rapier, Merlin, Stinger		Windows CE 3.0	(released April 2000)
Talisker[3]	Windows CE .NET	Windows CE 4.0	(released January 7, 2002)
Jameson		Windows CE 4.1	(released June 2002)
McKendric		Windows CE 4.2	(released April 23, 2003)
Ozone		Windows Mobile 2003	(released June 23, 2003, powered by Windows CE 4.20)
Ozone update		Windows Mobile 2003 SE	(released March 24, 2004, powered by Windows CE 4.21)
Macallan[3]		Windows CE 5.0	(July 9, 2004
Magneto		Windows Mobile 5.0	Windows Mobile 5.0 was officially announced at Microsoft's Mobile and Embedded Developers Conference 2005 in Las Vegas, May 9-12 2005. (based on Windows CE 5.0)
Crossbow	Windows Mobile 6.0		Update to Mobile 5.0, released in H1 2007.
Yamazaki[3]	Windows CE 6.0	Windows Embedded CE 6.0
Photon	Windows Mobile 7.0		Major update to the platform, merging Smartphone and Pocket PC. Expected in Q4 2007. [2] (based on Windows CE 6.0)

DirectX family

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Quartz	ActiveMovie	DirectShow	The implementation is still contained in a DLL called quartz.dll. DirectShow and Windows Media Player first appeared as ActiveMovie and ActiveMovie Player as optional components in Windows 98.
	ActiveMovie Player	Windows Media Player	ActiveMovie was the old name of DirectShow.
Polaris		Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP
Aurora		Windows Media Player 11 for Windows Vista

Visual Studio family

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Thunder		Visual Basic 1.0	The first version of Visual Basic.[4] The standard dialogs and controls created by the Visual Basic runtime library all have "Thunder" as a prefix of their internal type names (for example, buttons are internally known as ThunderCommandButton).
Zamboni		Microsoft Visual C++ 4.1	[4]
Everett		Visual Studio .NET 2003	After Everett, a town near Seattle.
Whidbey		Visual Studio 2005	After Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. A little farther from Seattle than Everett.
Orcas	Visual Studio 2007		Named after Orcas Island, located in Puget Sound. Farther still from Seattle.
Hawaii			Next version of Visual Studio after Orcas. Named after Hawaii Island.
Burton		Visual Studio Team System
Hatteras	Visual Studio Team System's Source Control System		Named after the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in the Outer Banks region of North Carolina.[5]
Ocracoke	Visual Studio Team System load testing suite		Named after the Ocracoke Island Lighthouse on Ocracoke Island, also in North Carolina.[5]
Currituck	Team Foundation Work Item Tracking		Named after the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla, North Carolina.[5]
Bodie	Team Foundation Server SDK		Named after the Bodie Island Lighthouse in North Carolina.[5]
Whitehorse	Visual Studio Team System's designers for architects.		Includes Application Designer, Logical Data Center Designer, System Designer, and Deployment Designer.
Fidalgo		Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for WinFX	Named after Fidalgo Island, located in Puget Sound in the San Juan Islands.
Tuscany	Online version of Visual Studio.		Currently a research project.[3]

Exchange Server Family

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Osmium		Exchange Server 5.5	Originally called Iridium, but Microsoft received a cease and desist order from Motorola which already had a project with that code name, so Microsoft chose the previous element in the periodic table.
Platinum		Exchange Server 2000
Titanium		Exchange Server 2003

SQL Server family

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
SQL95		SQL Server 6.0	The first version of Microsoft SQL Server that was designed for Windows NT
Starfighter		SQL Server Enterprise Manager	Management tool, included in SQL Server 6.0 - SQL Server 2000
Hydra		SQL Server 6.5
Sphinx		SQL Server 7.0
Plato		SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services	(later called Analysis Services, in SQL Server 2000)
Shiloh		SQL Server 2000 (32-bit)	(version 8.0)
Liberty		SQL Server 2000 (64-bit)	(version 8.0)
Rosetta		SQL Server Reporting Services
Yukon		SQL Server 2005	(version 9.0)
Laguna	SQL Server CE 3.0	SQL Server 2005 Mobile Edition
Katmai / Akadia		?	Next release [6]

Experimental operating systems

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Singularity			Experimental operating system based on the Microsoft .NET platform, using software-based type safety as a replacement for hardware-based memory protection. Project homepage.

Expression suite

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Acrylic	Expression Graphic Designer	Expression Design
Sparkle	Expression Interactive Designer	Expression Blend
Quartz	Expression Web Designer	Expression Web

 

.NET

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Lightning, Project 42	Next Generation Windows Services	Microsoft .NET v1.0	Project Lightning was the original codename for the Common Language Runtime in 1997.[7] The team was based in building 42, hence Project 42.[8] "Next Generation Windows Services" appeared in the earliest press releases about the upcoming platform.[9]
COM+ 2.0, COM Object Runtime (COR), Universal Runtime (URT)		Microsoft .NET Framework v1.0	The name COM+ is still in use to designate extensions to COM (currently at version 1.5) for resource management, integrated security and transactionality. .NET itself has little in common with COM and COM+.
	WinFX	.NET Framework 3.0
Avalon		Windows Presentation Foundation
HailStorm		.NET My Services	Project to make MSN-hosted user data available to the same users at non-Microsoft web sites; never released
Indigo		Windows Communication Foundation
InfoCard		Windows CardSpace

MSN/Windows Live

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
A1	Windows OneCare Live	Windows Live OneCare	Security suite featuring antivirus, antispyware, backup & recovery, and tune-up
Blackbird			Online content authoring technology developed alongside MSN 1.0 but cancelled in favor of HTML and ActiveX
Kahuna		Windows Live Mail
Marvel		Microsoft Network, as shipped with Windows 95

Others

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
Aero Diamond			Used during the development of Windows Vista to describe a set of advanced user interface effects for the Desktop Window Manager to be introduced after Vista's release.[10]
Argo		Zune	A media player to rival the iPod.
Atlas	Ajax implementation in .NET	ASP.NET Ajax	An implementation for ASP.NET of Ajax native to the .NET Framework 2.0.
Bullet		Microsoft Mail 3.0	Microsoft's first LAN-based email product.
Budapest		Microsoft Office Communicator Web Access 2005
Cider			Visual Studio designer for building Windows Presentation Foundation applications. Meant to be used by application developers.
Concur			Aims to: define higher-level abstractions (above "threads and locks"); for today’s imperative languages; that evenly support the range of concurrency granularities; to let developers write correct and efficient concurrent applications; with lots of latent parallelism; that can be efficiently mapped to the user’s.
Darwin	Microsoft Installer	Windows Installer	[11]
Godot		Microsoft Layer for Unicode	Named after the play Waiting for Godot (centered around the failure of a man named "Godot" to appear and the endless wait for him), because it was felt to be long overdue.[12]
Greenwich	Real-Time Communications Server 2003	Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2003
Istanbul		Microsoft Office Communicator 2005
LINQ			Language Integrated Query Language extensions to expose query syntax natively to languages such as Visual Basic .NET and C#
Maestro		Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005.
Metro		XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Mira			Windows CE .NET-based technology for smart displays. [4] [5]
Monad	MSH, Microsoft Shell	Windows PowerShell	Monads, according to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz, are the ultimate elements of the universe, individual percepient beings, and MSH is similarly composed of small, individual modules the user puts in interrelation.
Origami		Ultra-Mobile PC
Omega		JET Engine	ISAM database engine used in Microsoft Access, a desktop database management system.
Palladium	Next-Generation Secure Computing Base	Trusted Platform Module Services	Released in Windows Vista
Pinball		High Performance File System	Implemented as an Installable File System when IBM and Microsoft were co developing OS/2.
Softsled			Software based Media Center Extender.
Tahoe		Sharepoint Portal Server 2001.
Xenon		Xbox 360 processor and codename
Xenos		Xbox 360 GPU and codename
Zephyr		Xbox 360 v.2	Xbox 360 console with a HDMI port, IPTV support, a new CPU with 65nm technology, and an increased size hard drive.

Toaster

In Microsoft jargon, the "toaster" is the hardware equivalent of fictional entities, such as the Contoso company or the http://tempuri.org/ URI, used in documentation and sample code as placeholders to be redefined by third-party developers.

The convention of calling "toaster" a fictional hardware device is by no means exclusive to Microsoft, but Microsoft formalizes the concept to an unprecedented level: the "toaster" is prominently featured in the Driver Development Kit (DDK), as a fictional hardware device that performs no function but is extremely complex. The "toaster" is removable, plugged in a dedicated bus, it has hotplug support, power management, a customized driver installation procedure, and even UPS functionality. Its device driver implements all the required APIs but no other function, and it's released as a sample "skeleton" driver for developers of actual hardware devices.

References

1. ^ Brier Dudley (May 2, 2006). Fun with Microsoft code names. Brier Dudley's blog. The Seattle Times. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
2. ^ Deposition of Bill Gates. U.S. v. Microsoft Special Report. washingtonpost.com (August 27, 1998). Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
3. ^ ^{a b c d e f} The Windows CE New Kernel (PowerPoint presentation). Microsoft.
4. ^ ^{a b} Chris Smith (April 30, 2006). Some Microsoft codenames. Chris Smith's completely unique view. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Chris Rathjen (November 16, 2004). Hatteras, Currituck, Ocracoke. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
6. ^ ChannelWeb: Next SQL Server stop: Katmai. Retrieved on 2005-11-05.
7. ^ Carl Franklin (January 2005). Jay Roxe interview. CoDe Magazine. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
8. ^ Eric Wilson (February 18, 2003). How .Net-work drew sceptics. The Age. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
9. ^ Microsoft Unveils Vision for Next Generation Internet. Microsoft PressPass. Microsoft (June 22, 2000). Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
10. ^ http://www.istartedsomething.com/20070130/interview-tjeerd-ces2007/#aerodiamond
11. ^ Chris Smith (July 1, 2005). Windows Installer, The .NET Framework, The Bootstrapper, and You. Chris Smith's completely unique view. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.
12. ^ Michael Kaplan (February 12, 2005). Why/how MSLU came to be, and more. Sorting It All Out. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved on 2006-07-23.

• Additional code names on bink.nu
• Microsoft Codenames - Microsoft codenames, this is a German website
• The Pillars of Longhorn > Indigo (from the Wayback Machine as this page redirects to the Windows Vista homepage)
• Windows CE Codenames on HPC:Factor
• Windows Media Player 11 an iTunes contender? CNET News