Pieces of Microsoft's forthcoming OS, due late 2006, are falling into place Key chunks of Vista, Microsoft’s next-gen version of Windows, are already landing in finished form, even though the new OS itself won’t arrive before the end of 2006. Last Wednesday, the company announced that release versions of WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) and WWF (Windows Workflow Foundation) were available for download on Microsoft Developer Network, ready for programmers to start building Vista-class apps on their current XP and Server 2003 systems.Although Windows Presentation Foundation — the underlying technology behind the new, jazzed-up user interface — has generated the most buzz, WCF (formerly known as Indigo) and WWF are arguably the most interesting technologies in Vista’s new WinFX programming model (which also includes the new WinFS file system).WCF codifies a tall stack of Web services protocols, laying the groundwork for developers to build rich services that can work in tandem. Introduced last fall, WWF raises the possibility of stitching together the functionality of existing Microsoft software, from Office to Enterprise Servers, into composite workflow applications. Although the two technologies are in an early release phase, they are being offered under Microsoft’s Go-Live license, which allows limited deployment in live operating environments. “These special builds [of WCF and WWF serve as] the green light for customers to deploy these technologies,” said Ari Bixhorn, director of Web services strategy at Microsoft. “Customers have told us the reason they want Go-Live releases is so they can test their applications in a live production environment.”The new releases of WCF and WWF, which were first offered in beta last year, give developers a head start on Vista, said Ronald Schmelzer, senior analyst at ZapThink. “Apps built with this Go-Live version of the software will run on Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, bringing Vista capabilities to apps before Vista actually launches,” Schmelzer said.New features in the Go-Live release of Windows Communication Foundation include a service configuration editor for tweaking settings and a service trace viewer for viewing messages being sent between multiple services. The Go-Live release of Windows Workflow Foundation features new policy activities to evaluate complex rule sets and a new file format based on XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language). Microsoft’s use of XAML as a way to specify business processes is unique, Schmelzer said. Microsoft is not releasing a Go-Live license for Windows Presentation Foundation because this software does not require the type of scalability testing necessary for the other two technologies, according to Microsoft. The early version of Windows Presentation Foundation being offered on Wednesday has support for frame-based animations as well as for applications accessed through a browser. Software DevelopmentTechnology IndustrySmall and Medium Business