14 DAY TRIAL // On June 2, 2008 Microsoft made available for download the Community Technology Preview of Windows Embedded Standard 2009. The successor of Windows XP Embedded, Windows Embedded Standard 2009 is planned for availability in the second half of 2008, and will bring to the table some new features addressed specifically to developers. This is precisely the case of the Kernel Mode Driver Framework. The KMDF library, a component of Windows Driver Foundation, permits the creation of kernel-mode drivers with full support for the Windows Driver Model.
"The framework's library is included in the Windows Vista and later versions of the Windows Driver Kit (WDK). One can use the library, and the driver kits that include it, to develop drivers that run on Microsoft Windows 2000 and later versions of the Windows operating systems. Therefore, it's supported on Windows Embedded Standard which is a new componentized version of Windows XP Pro OS," explained Weijuan Shi, Program Manager of the Embedded Windows Customer Strike Team.
Weijuan Shi noted that the main advantage of the KMDF library is the fact that it can tap various areas of the operating system, at the same time allowing for simpler driver using less code than WDM equivalents. The promise in this context is, of course, that the framework will in fact boost the reliability of the drivers.
"What we have done in Windows Embedded Standard for KMDF is we retrieved the KMDF co-installer from the redistributable folder after a Windows Driver Kit (WDK) is installed and componentized it. The version of the co-installer in the CTP build is 1.5, aka, WdfCoInstaller01005.dll. Our test team has done a great job testing the framework with various scenarios and samples. We are looking at having the latest version 1.7 in our final release," Weijuan Shi added.