Information about Microsoft Codenames

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
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		Microsoft 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.
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.
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 XP 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. The Eiger is a mountain in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. The Eiger is part of a trio of mountains, The Eiger, The Mönch and The Jungfrau.
Mönch			Similar to Eiger, but supports Windows Mobile devices, Windows Image Acquisition, wireless networking, VPN-s and advanced IP (Internet Protocol) security. The Mönch is a mountain in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland. The Mönch is part of a trio of mountains, The Eiger, The Mönch and The Jungfrau.
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 was "Vienna" and is now Windows 7).
Cougar	Windows Small Business Server "Longhorn"		In development. Cougar is a ski-run on Whistler Mountain.
Longhorn		Windows Server 2008	In development. Planned server equivalent of Windows Vista to be released in 2008.
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	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.

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.
Corona		Windows Media Player 9 Series
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 large city 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.<ref name="outerbanks" />
Currituck	Team Foundation Work Item Tracking		Named after the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla, North Carolina.<ref name="outerbanks" />
Bodie	Team Foundation Server SDK		Named after the Bodie Island Lighthouse in North Carolina.<ref name="outerbanks" />
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
Touchdown		Exchange Server 4.0
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	same as Terminal Services, Terminal Server
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
Accelerator			Allows developers to use managed code to program GPU's to create highly parallel programmes.
Astoria			A framework that takes advantage of Windows Communication Foundation and the Entity Data Model (EDM) to allow developers to expose data in the cloud.
Rotor		Shared Source Common Language Infrastructure (SSCLI)

MSN/Windows Live

Codename	Preliminary name	Final name	Notes
A1	Windows Live OneCare	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
Catapult		Microsoft Proxy Server 1.0
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.
CRM V1.0, Tsunami		Microsoft CRM version 1.0[5]	The platform was initially code named Tsunami[6], but once the decision was made to make it an actual product it was just changed to the initials as the initials were enough of a code name.[7]
Darwin	Microsoft Installer	Windows Installer	[11]
Danube Phase I		Microsoft CRM version 1.2[8]
Danube Phase II		Microsoft CRM version 3[9]
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.[10][11]
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. [12] [13]
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.
Titan, Kilimanjaro		Microsoft CRM version 4[14]	Was originally Kilimanjaro but changed to Titan as Kilimanjaro was too difficult to spell.[15]
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.
Jolt		Silverlight 1.0
Paxos	Silverlight 1.1

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

External links

• Additional code names on bink.nu
• (German) Microsoft Codenames
• [http://web.archive.org/web/20041121011611/msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/Indigo/default.aspx The Pillars of Longhorn > Indigo] (from the Wayback Machine as this page redirects to the Windows Vista homepage)
• Windows CE Codenames on
• Windows Media Player 11 an iTunes contender? CNET News
• Open Source Media Center Extender The Softsled Project