System Services change in Windows Vista
Every new Windows release introduces new features, which means new APIs. Vista is no different.
As Vista is approaching RTM, documentation of new Vista APIs starts to show up on MSDN web site.
The following is a short summary of changes in System Services in Windows Vista documented in Vista so far. Apparently, new contents will be added to MSDN.
I only list the things I think interesting. Folks should read MSDN for more information.
Debugging and Error Handling:
Wait Chain Traversal This feature let debugger to retrieve the thread wait chain to determine if there is a deadlock or not.
Windows Error Reporting This is the next version of Dr. Watson. It adds an extensive set of APIs for application error report.
Dll, Processes and Threads
Thread Ordering Service This feature enables ordered execution of threads within a thread ordering group.
Multimedia Class Scheduler Multimedia applications can use this feature to ensure smooth multimedia rendering.
Thread Pools The totally re-written, brand new Windows thread pools
Object namespaces Private object namespaces to mitigate kernel object name squatting issue.
Condition Variables Of course, condition variables
One-Time Initialization Multi threads, one initialization
File Services
Symbolic Links Symbolic links!!!
Transactional NTFS Multi updates, transactional. No more worry on what if one file is updated but the other is not.
Kernel Transaction Manager As if transactional NTFS is not enough, now you can change registry and files, transactionally!!!
Registry
A few new registry helper APIs.
RegLoadAppKey Your application’s private registry hive.