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List of Microsoft codenames

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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]

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 Dolly refers to Dolly the Sheep, the first sheep to be cloned.
Millennium Millennium Windows Me Me stands for Millennium Edition

Windows NT family

Codename Preliminary name Final name Notes
NT OS/2 OS/2 3.0 Windows NT 3.1
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 gold (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[citation needed], Windows Server "Longhorn" Windows Server 2008 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].
Fiji Planned as (or believed to be) a kind of "add-on" to Windows Vista to be released in 2008 before Vienna in 2009. It (so far) is speculated to include an improved sidebar, better speech recognition, new themes, and a Garageband-like application presumably called 'Monaco.' However, this could end up being pure rumor or Vista Service Pack 1. At this moment, much of the information available is speculation.
Blackcomb, Vienna Windows 7 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 an 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 Windows Mobile 6.0 Update to Mobile 5.0, released in February 12, 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]
Rainier Visual Studio .NET 2002 After Rainier, a small town south of Seattle
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 2008 Named after Orcas Island, located in Puget Sound. Farther still from Seattle.
Rosario Team System-only release after Visual Studio 2008. Named after a resort located on Orcas 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), Intel Itanium based system only
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 SQL Server 2008 [4] 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
Windows Presentation Foundation/Everywhere Silverlight
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
Tornado MSN Messenger Service

Others

Codename Preliminary name Final name Notes
Acropolis Application framework for Smart Clients
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]
Alexandria Zune Marketplace An online music store to rival iTunes Store.
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.
Bandit Schedule+ 1.0 Microsoft's first Personal_information_manager
Bullet Microsoft Mail 3.0 Microsoft's first LAN-based email product written in-house. (Microsoft had earlier purchased Intermail for AppleTalk networks and Network Courier for PC networks.)
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.
Media2Go Windows Mobile software for Portable Media Centers Platform built on Windows Mobile found on portable media players.[5][6]
Metro XML Paper Specification (XPS)
Milan Microsoft Surface Table-top style computer with multi-touch touchscreen interface.
Mira Windows CE .NET-based technology for smart displays.

[7] [8]

Monad MSH, Microsoft Shell Windows PowerShell Monads, according to philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's monadology, 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 Trusted Windows Effort to develop a small, very secure operating environment within Windows, including curtained memory, trusted input, and graphics. Project renamed to Next-Generation Secure Computing Base, and was never fully implemented.
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.
Springfield Microsoft Popfly Website in Alpha testing stage providing mashup and webpages creation tools, with publishing as Rich Internet Application option.
Tahoe Sharepoint Portal Server 2001.
Xenon Xbox 360 processor and codename
Xenos Xbox 360 GPU and codename
Zephyr Xbox 360 Elite Black Xbox 360 console with an HDMI port and an increased size hard drive.
Jasper “Jasper” provides a programming interface to your data that is well-suited to rapid development. When a Jasper program runs, Jasper connects to the database, determines the database schema, and generates corresponding data classes. This generation step does not result in source files; the data classes are compiled in-memory and available for use within the running program.

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 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  2. ^ "Deposition of Bill Gates". U.S. v. Microsoft Special Report. washingtonpost.com. August 27 1998. Retrieved 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  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 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  5. ^ a b c d Chris Rathjen (November 16 2004). "Hatteras, Currituck, Ocracoke". MSDN Blogs. Retrieved 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  6. ^ "ChannelWeb: Next SQL Server stop: Katmai". Retrieved 2005-11-05.
  7. ^ Carl Franklin (January 2005). "Jay Roxe interview". CoDe Magazine. Retrieved 2006-07-23.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: year (link)
  8. ^ Eric Wilson (February 18 2003). "How .Net-work drew sceptics". The Age. Retrieved 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  9. ^ "Microsoft Unveils Vision for Next Generation Internet". Microsoft PressPass. Microsoft. June 22 2000. Retrieved 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  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 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  12. ^ Michael Kaplan (February 12 2005). "Why/how MSLU came to be, and more". Sorting It All Out. MSDN Blogs. Retrieved 2006-07-23. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
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