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WinFS to be available in WinXP
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Mar 07, 2005 12:20 PM
from the by-bits-and-dribbles dept.
from the by-bits-and-dribbles dept.
ScooterMcGoo writes "According to a Microsoft Watch blog, WinFS is being back ported for Windows XP.
From TFA: WinFS isn't dead, Tom Rizzo, Microsoft's director of product management for SQL Server, recently told Microsoft Watch. In fact, Microsoft is planning to provide an update on the technology at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September, he said.
Rizzo said that Microsoft is busily back-porting the WinFS file-system technology to Windows XP.
It's unclear if Microsoft also is porting WinFS to Windows Server 2003, but such a move would be likely, given that the Redmond software vendor is doing so with Avalon and Indigo."
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WinFS' Demise Not a Bang Or a Whimper 264 comments
Shadowruni writes "The Seattle-PI confirms with Mircosoft what MS bloggers and pundits have been saying all along. WinFS simply isn't going to happen. Some of its features have been 'merged' with other projects." From the article: "WinFS was dropped from Vista in what company executives described at the time as a trade-off to get the operating system completed in a timely manner. The release of Vista has since been delayed again and is now scheduled for November for large customers and January 2007 for the general public, though some observers say it may be out even later." Final confirmation of a story from last month.
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Aha, that explains it ... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
As the article states: "Microsoft decided to back-port both Avalon and Indigo to older versions of Windows -- Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 -- in order to maintain backward compatibility and help seed the application-development market, officials said. "
If Microsoft wants to make WinFS a fundamental part of their strategy, they must back port it. Forcing developers to upgrade before they can develop is foolhardy.
Parent
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you misspelled "monopoly"
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Re:Sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, WinFS will not make it into the hard deadline for Longhorn. That said, it will be available freely as a download, and possible as part of Windows Update, for Longhorn and other operating systems including XP and, yes, Win2003, some time after the Longhorn deadline.
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Re:Sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to see what filesystems are like when you add database features, look up some BeFS documentation from BeOS. There's a (sadly apparently now out of print) textbook on building filesystems using BeFS as a guide. While it's not really a database (it allows you define arbitrary indexes and allows searching on those indexes, but lacks most other features a database user would be familiar with) using it gives you a pretty good idea of how one that really was a database (with central data storage, relational algebra and set operations, etc.) would work.
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How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS) (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd love to be able to use a filesystem that can be seen in a dual-boot environment; that's better than FAT32 or FAT16; but those are really the only choices now.
Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS) (Score:5, Informative)
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WinVapor (Score:5, Funny)
Longhorn (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they plan on back-porting the first versions of Avalon, Indigo and WinFS, and then providing feature updates to Longhorn only, forcing customers to update? Or is Longhorn really just XP SP3?
Re:Longhorn (Score:5, Interesting)
The more news I see about feature of Longhorn it makes me wonder if M$ is pushing more towards the subscription model of their OS. Having users upgrade XP to Longhorn rather then sell Long Horn straight out. Start watching ELUA of these "upgrades" you might find yourself stuck in a subscription service called "Longhorn"
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Re:Longhorn (Score:5, Funny)
We had Internet, 32-bit color, and multitasking in Windows 3.1, but no one seemed to complain about the jump to Windows 95 (especially because they didn't have to tinker with CONFIG.SYS/AUTOEXEC.BAT to get games working.) Similarly, while new advanced technologies may be available in XP for developers and power users to preview or even use it is no substitute for the successful integration and exploitation of these features at all levels of the operating system.
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Microsoft has hired... (Score:5, Funny)
"Technology" (Score:5, Interesting)
When is this backport being released?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, the above assumes Microsoft still actually cares about what Apple does, which isn't all that likely.
Standard?? (Score:5, Funny)
Can't wait! (Score:5, Funny)
After seeing how completely incompetent and pants-wetting funny awful Microsoft is at file searching with the little doggie, I can't wait to experience having a few more unnecessary, superfluous, extravagant, and bloated layers HELPING me.
In other words.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not a bad idea.
If you have the ability to put off the release of another OS for years, you can save loads of money on development, but still have a steady income stream from copies bundled with computers (every dell, etc from 2001 to 2006, and those of us who had beta copies of windows 97 all know how the 2006 date will work) and the occasional consumer retail purchase.
Look, I'm not saying that MS isn't innovating anything, but compared to everyone else, they move at a glacial pace.
Since there really isn't any competition (and I use this word as "an OS that could hurt significantly MS financially", so please, no flames), they can sit back and release stuff whenever they feel like, but still have a pretty much guaranteed income stream.
Excuse my ignorance but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I'm a UNIX-type person but keeping files in a logical directory structure along with copious use of find and grep commands seems to be good enough on most of the systems I work on. I even use WinGrep on Windows for that level of text searching...
The Registry is a database and definitely a weak point of Windows when it comes to resilience. NTFS seems to do a reasonable job of keeping the filesystem intact, why add a risk of introducing resilience problems into the filesystem by linking it to a database? Unless it's just a marketing ploy to sell you an MSSQL license at the same time.
Whatever anyone says about UNIX/Linux, the concept of keeping operating system tools simple and doing a good job of one specific task has allowed it to earn the stability and resilience reputation. Sure, you've got to spend time shell-scripting to unleash its full power but that's half the fun of it.
I'd love someone to give me a definitive answer as to why the concept of WinFS is so good - I genuinely don't understand all the hoohah about it.
Logical move (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:And I care why? - MS MArket share, thats why (Score:5, Interesting)
Incidentally, Copernic 1.5 beta now supports Mozilla Thunderbirds email and contacts and Firefox history and bookmarks - and does it well. This is a double threat to Microsoft, as their vision sees WinFS as a factor which ties people to Outlook and IE6/7
Parent
Re:And I care why? (Score:5, Informative)
Despite the unforutnate name, WinFS is a service that runs above the filesystem. The data is still stored on a plain old NTFS partition(s).
source: Microsoft's WinFS developer page [microsoft.com]
The data is still just as (in)accessible as it's always been. The meta data is locked away in the WinFS store but we haven't been using that all this time so it's not like we're going to be any worse off.
as for writting NTFS, I suggest you take a look at captive NTFS [jankratochvil.net] which lets you read and write your NTFS partitions in Linux with the same confidence that you do in Windows.
Parent
Re:WinFS (Score:5, Informative)
Quote from MS on WinFS:
One of the monumental problems organizations face today is aggregating information that's stored in disparate formats. Knowledge workers have long wanted to be able to search for content independent of format. WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item, regardless of what type of file it is or which application created it.
So not only is it a file system, it is also a search engine.
Source:http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/winfs/ [microsoft.com]
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Re:What's left for Longhorn? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Rushed? (Score:5, Interesting)
This, along with Avalon being ported back to XP and IE7, is interesting - MS is responding to consumer demand for new features instead of doing the usual: forcing people to upgrade operating systems for them.
One thing though - I would hope that MS allows us ambitious types to activate a new XP installation so that we can try this out on a different machine. Otherwise most people like me will adopt a real "wait and see" attitude when it comes out.
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