Farewell Win32, are you ready?

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This November, Microsoft's new generation of operating system Vista will be released, it will change the original programming mechanism.
Vista generators will eventually be separated from the previous Win32 APIs, replaced by a manageable WinFX, and WinFX is Microsoft's fourth generation API after DOS, Win16, and Win32. According to foreign periodicals, software previously developed using the WIN32 API will not run after Microsoft's promised maintenance period.
The Win API, after Windows 95 to XP, has been sought after by many app developers. In the past, whether the most commonly used word processing, e-mail, instant messaging software, or professional anti-virus, ERP software, and so on, most of the use of Microsoft provided by the API to develop, so as to eliminate the direct contact with system resources, hardware to deal with the trouble. Microsoft offers nearly 78,000 Windows APIs and a number of assistive development tools, a friendly gesture that allows countless developers to create applications on the Microsoft platform. But on the other hand, Microsoft has also "controlled" the software development through the API, has helped itself to achieve the hegemony position. However, after the Win32 API fades out of view, will the next generation of APIs continue to be the Win32 of the era as Microsoft envisions it?
Challenges from the Internet
In fact, the first thing Microsoft has to meet is the challenge of the Internet. At a recent "zend/php show", Google's VP boss, Booz Voss, said computing power was shifting from proprietary technology to Microsoft's API to links and content on the Web. He believes that 10 years ago, the API meant control, but now the dominant link is. "In the present world, the API is the link. "Although Booz Voss intentionally skipped the fact that the application software ultimately had to deal with hardware, but it also shows a real phenomenon: With the advent of the network, technology no longer gives users, investors and software developers much interest, how to use the existing technology to provide a variety of services is the focus of attention. As Bosworth predicts, Microsoft's API appears to be marginalized.
The consumer demand of software has changed, and the application software developers have changed. In the past, in C/S (client/server) mode, the software was developed by the developer according to the customer's needs, and then called the operating system API to implement, and finally deployed to the client's terminal and server. Now, software development is experiencing the transformation from C/s structure to B/s (browser/server) structure, software can not be deployed to the client, users can only open the Web browser to achieve demand.
"In enterprise-level applications," Datang software General manager assistant and Planning consulting manager Chen Bin said, "The use of B/s software to the client's requirements are reduced, (software) most features, including interface controls, are placed on the application server to deploy and share. "Once all operations are done on the network, the software that implements these operations does not have to be installed on the client as before, and there is no need to call the desktop operating system API, but rather the cumbersome work of dealing with hardware equipment to the middleware or server to deal with, so that The living space of the desktop operating system API has to face challenges.
In b/S mode, the change is not only the way software development, software developers are also changing. The new generation of programmers is less familiar with Windows APIs, and Booz Voss says they use PHP, lamp combinations (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/php/python) more. This can be seen from the supply and demand relationship of human resources. According to the New York City Human Resources Survey, the number of Windows API programmers is far less than in the past, so when it comes to Windows API developers, these programmers can be worth 130,000 of dollars per year, and in recent years the number of network developers who have been growing up can only earn 80,000 of dollars in annual pay.
However, different application software development producers have different interpretations of this. "Antivirus security products need to be as close to the operating system as possible to complement the security of the system," said Jijun, a senior product management and technology advisor for the trend technology. "Security applications not only need to be open with Microsoft APIs," in fact, to better protect the system, the Microsoft API is very large. "Despite the uncertain future of WinFX, WinFX is still a big success in areas where security is closely related to the operating system," he said. Only in the CRM, ERP and other focus on customer business development areas, with the B/s development model gradually popularized, will gradually dilute the requirements of the operating system API.
Attack, Microsoft to change
Microsoft has seen these threats. So, Vista came out, with a whole new WinFX.
Without the new technology, there will be no shocking software. Microsoft's WinFX has reduced the complexity of the Win32 API to about 8,000, in the. NET Framework with a manageable code programming model, with the underlying system resources more closely related, can automatically manage such as memory, reduce the burden on the programmer. In addition, WinFX also add a new graphical user interface subsystem Avalon, file subsystem WinFS and Network Service communication subsystem Indigo, making the development environment more friendly. According to Gartner, these technologies suggest that Microsoft's API has changed dramatically, and that the Win32 API will eventually be replaced by WinFX as a legacy in the new operating system, just as Win32 replaces dos and Win16.
Although WinFX represents a significant improvement in Microsoft's application design, Gartner believes there is a price to it. Over time, programmers can continue to develop applications using the WIN32 API, but programs developed using WinFX are not backward compatible and can only run on Vista platforms. Moreover, the changes brought by the Vista operating system and the WinFX developer framework will sooner or later stimulate developers to switch to the. NET Framework, so developers should be able to manage the coding skills of the. NET Framework as early as possible in order to cope with the problems that occur when the WinFX is fully used in 2008.
Microsoft, of course, will not forget that its dominance also comes from the contribution of application developers. Therefore, it is essential to provide better development tools, guidelines and large-scale promotional training. With Vista, the SDK (Software Developer Toolkit) contains a set of user interface components and behaviors, and Microsoft says the new Vista SDK combines previously dispersed tools, toolkits, and technical content to support end-to-end Windows Customer development. Microsoft has also prepared a series of activities that enable developers to familiarize themselves with and improve the use of WinFX, such as the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.
Microsoft has always been confident in all its efforts. At a recent meeting of professional Developers (PDC05), Microsoft announced that more than 30 independent software vendors (IRV) had confirmed that new applications for Vista operating systems would be released. Microsoft believes this is the industry's enthusiastic response to Microsoft's next-generation operating system. Thurrott, a Windows Supersite expert who has been devoting special attention to Microsoft's next-generation operating system since 2002, says Microsoft has provided these technologies to existing users to expand the Avalon and Indigo technology markets, Encourage developers to accept these technologies as quickly as possible. In this way, WinFX will be able to reach the Win32 API more than a few decades ago.
But the rushing rivals do not want to leave the next 10 years to Microsoft. In the scramble for the API, the free API provided by open source OS Linux has been in Europe for years; Outside the API, Sun's push on the Java-EE platform also gives young client software developers no access to the Windows API; in recent days, Google raises the banner of "Web Services", and continues to launch free web apps such as Froogle shopping, Gmail, and so on, directly threatening applications developed using the Microsoft API. And Microsoft, of course, is trying to find the best way to do it in a vista-plus adjustment.

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* What is win FX.

WinFX is a managed code programming model for Windows Vista, built and extended on the. NET framework. For today's software challenges, WinFX offers new opportunities to create software and services that cannot be built at this time. It enables developers and designers to quickly create new applications and new experiences that are more reliable, more secure, more visually stimulating, smarter in information management, more interconnected, and more collaborative.
WinFX is an extension of. NET 2.0, which is plainly in. NET has a lot of new APIs added. The main enhancements are three-block features: interface performance (WPF), Enterprise Communications (WCF), Workflow engine (WWF), and other new features such as XPS, InfoCard, etc.
As WinFX's name created a lot of confusion among developers about the relationship between WinFX and the framework, Microsoft decided to rename WinFX to the. NET Framework 3.0.

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