WinInsider

TechEd 2003 attendees witnessed a rare admission during Microsoft Senior Vice President Paul Flessner's keynote address: Microsoft is delaying the next version of SQL Server (code-named Yukon) from the first half of 2004 to the second half of 2004. Flessner said both the public beta and the final release are being delayed: "We've pushed Yukon back a bit," he said. "There will be a public beta, as we had originally announced, that will come on this summer. You'll see a public beta, and originally we said we'd ship in the first half of calendar year 2004. We are pushing that back into the second half of calendar year 2004, not driven by anything specifically; we just want to get the QA cycle right and more work around embedding the Common Language Runtime, which we're super excited about, as I hope all of you are."

Microsoft said Tuesday it has joined in an effort to develop standards for radio frequency identification technology, which proponents say will someday replace bar codes used on many products today. The Redmond, Wash., software maker announced at the Retail Systems 2003 Conference & Exposition in Chicago that it will work with AutoID Inc., a joint venture of the Uniform Code Council Inc. and EAN International.

RFID tags contain computer chips capable of storing more information about products than today's bar codes, making it possible for retailers and manufacturers to build more efficient inventory management systems.

In response to the publication of the SQL Slammer source code in a major industry magazine, Microsoft officials are warning users to make sure they've taken advantage of the rash of SQL Slammer defenses on the Microsoft Web site.

Wired Magazine is running an article in its July issue called "Slammed! An Inside View of the Worm that Crashed the Internet in 15 Seconds." The article, which includes a copy of the Slammer worm source code, prompted Microsoft corporate vice president for SQL Server, Gordon Mangione, to write a letter to SQL Server users that Microsoft posted on its Web site.

When Microsoft executive Peyton Smith recently declared at an industry conference that office phones were destined to "collect dust," audible chuckles rippled through the darkened hall. Two months later, some smirks still remain. But fewer folks are laughing out loud.

This summer, Microsoft will unveil its much-hyped server software Office Real Time Communications (RTC) Server 2003, officially joining the race to give office communications their biggest makeover since the arrival of e-mail.

Microsoft will begin by offering corporate instant messaging and "presence" features, competing with longtime rivals such as IBM and Sun Microsystems in a hot new communications niche. Presence technology lets IM users detect whether or not a contact is online and is moving onto other platforms such as wireless devices.

C# is a language for writing .NET applications. It is not exclusive in this role (Visual Basic, C++, Java, COBOL, Python and Perl, among others, all have compilers that generate code that runs inside a .NET runtime), but it was created specifically to support features found in the .NET development platform. It was designed by Anders Hejlsberg, famous for his creation of the Delphi programming language. It is standardized by the ECMA and on its way to standardization by the IEEE.

C# is a great language, and I have found it to have a number of advantages over Java the language (versus Java the development platform and runtime architecture, which was the subject of a previous article). I am NOT, however, going to say that these advantages necessarily make C# "better" than the Java language. Programming language preferences tend to be as varied as tastes in clothing. For those who prefer the Java syntax, a Java syntax compiler exists in the form of J#.

As legal battles heat up over who owns the rights to the Unix operating system, another dispute has been quietly simmering over the rights to the Unix name itself. Apple Computer is being sued by The Open Group, the San Francisco company that claims ownership of the Unix trademark, for using the term Unix in conjunction with its Mac OS X operating system without a license. Apple has countersued, asking a judge to declare that the trademark is invalid, because the term Unix has become generic.

Though initiated nearly 18 months ago, the case has not yet gone to trial. According to a motion filed with the court Tuesday, both companies want to have an exchange of factual documents completed by August, with a trial sought for February.

I've always been in awe of Bell Laboratories' (now part of Lucent Technologies) track record in research and development. So many of the innovations we now take for granted came out of Bell Labs: Hi-Fi recording, Motion Picture Sound, Radio Astronomy, Stereo, Unix, and, of course, the transistor. It's hard to think of another laboratory that's had that kind of impact. Microsoft Research (MSR) is a mere pup compared to the 78-year-old Bell Labs, but Microsoft is pouring millions of dollars into MSR in an effort to position it as an innovation leader for the new millennium. Is the company succeeding? I went to one of the group's fairs (which are held all over the US) in Washington DC to find out.

As the end of its fiscal year approaches, Microsoft has named an official channel chief for enterprise partners--sort of. Simon Witts, who once served as vice president of sales and marketing for Microsoft Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), has been named to serve as corporate vice president of Microsoft's Enterprise and Partner Group (EPG), a post left void after Charles Stevens moved to a new role at Microsoft a year ago.

Sources say Witts will report directly to Paul Flessner, senior vice president, Server Platform Division. A Microsoft spokeswoman confirmed the appointment of Witts to the top enterprise post but could not confirm his new title as of press time.

Microsoft is hitting the road with a demo of its much debated Next-Generation Secure Computing Base (NGSCB) in an effort to persuade more people of the merits of the security initiative. First shown at the Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in New Orleans in May, the demo will now go on a small tour. Microsoft will bring it to its Mountain View, Calif., campus for two days and to New York for two or three days, said Mario Juarez, NGSCB product manager at Microsoft.

"We do this because we know we are dealing in these particularly hot arenas of security and privacy and that we need to spend a lot of time addressing this topic," said Juarez. "We are not building this engine that is taking control of people's computers, or whatever fantasy people spin."

The final specification for 802.11g should be a done deal by this time Thursday. This is on target with projections from earlier this year for a June approval.

802.11g is the high speed (54Mbps) wireless networking technology that is backward compatible with the slower 802.11b that is just about everywhere. Both run in the 2.5GHz radio frequency band. 802.11g extends the OSI Model Physical Layer (PHY) of 802.11b from 11Mbps using DSSS modulation to 54Mbps using OFDM modulation. Despite not being finalized until this week, 802.11g products have been shipping since late 2002.