WinFS to be available in WinXP

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."

How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS)

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Windows support any other modern filesystems such as Rieser 4?

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.

WinFS

[mboverload]

I don't know about you, but NTFS is fine for me. I mean, jesus, its a file system, not a damn search engine.

Longhorn

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

If everything will be back-ported to XP and Windows 2003, how does Microsoft plan to make any money off Longhorn, which has cost the company a lot in development time and money?

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:And I care why? - MS MArket share, thats why

[CdBee]

It's important to Microsoft as a way of preventing Google Desktop Search and Copernic from gaining mindshare and installed base before they introduce their final version in Longhorn

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

"Technology"

[hey]

Could we please stop using the word "technology" when "component" or "chunk o' software" would do fine. It's Microsoft speak.

Re:And I care why?

[randomErr]

It would the first major file system upgrade since including FAT32 in Win95C.

They can also use WinXP people to do unpaid beta testing of thier file system, before they include support on a server platform such as Win2003.

Re:Sure...

[Swamii]

Yes, there is a hard deadline for Longhorn, and that is a good thing.

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.

Re:WinFS

[Anonymous Coward]

So not only is it a file system, it is also a search engine.

No, bad design if so. The FS allows the storing of metadata (nothing new here, even HPFS on OS/2 had the concept of per file metadata). This metadata can then be utilized to store additional information about the file that can then be searched on in a consistent manner (or really a singular place). Think of it as being able to store your mp3 tag info, Word document properties, etc in a single place, it would make writing an over-arching search engine a lot simpler. The actual app that does the searching (i.e. that examines the contents of the metadata and compares it to criteria you specify) is simply an application, NOT a part of the FS.

Re:Longhorn

[bfizzle]

Maybe thats the point...?

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"

When is this backport being released??

[mcc]

Depending on when this arrives, this could possibly be an attempt to take the wind out of the sails of Apple's Tiger release-- probably to arrive sometime before midyear-- which lists as one of its major selling points a new feature called "spotlight" [apple.com]. Spotlight is a system service that has been described as offering similar functionality to WinFS, but does it without filesystem changes. I don't know exactly how accurate this description is, of course, since though Microsoft seems to talk an awful lot about WinFS and talk about its hypothetical technical capabilities, they never seem to give specifics on exactly how it works for the end user and what it means for the end user...

Of course, the above assumes Microsoft still actually cares about what Apple does, which isn't all that likely.

Re:WinFS

[RangerRick98]

WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item

So where's the metadata come from? If it's dependent on the end user filling it in when they save the file to disk, I don't hold out a lot of hope for the usefulness of this idea. I rarely add any additional information about the files I save (e.g., Microsoft Word documents), and I don't know anyone who does.

Re:And I care why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Despite the name, WinFS is not a new file system, it's a Windows service that provides a new organisational scheme for accessing data, gathers and stores information about files, etc. The file system itself will still be NTFS.

The main problem with NTFS isn't figuring it out, it's finding someone who wants to finish re-implementing a complex Microsoft file system for free. Moreover, if Linux (and other free operating systems) could fully support NTFS, including appropriate use of NT SIDs/ACLs, it would make a fine base file system. That might potentially give it the kind of universal acceptance FAT (a very simple file system) once had, which is something a good many Linux supporters would rather avoid.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Excuse my ignorance but...

[SuiteSisterMary]

I think it's good for all the same reasons that BeOS's metadata filesystem was good; the more metadata you can take out of the file format and put into the file descriptors, the better.

Re:Maybe won't be ported to Server 2003?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, more likely, it's buggy and they care less if your XP desktop crashes than if your server crashes.

I expect they'll port it to Server2003 when and only when it's stability is proven.

What WinFS is

[hackwrench]

From my understanding, WinFS is not a file system at all just a database API sitting on top of what is essentially NTFS http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=winfs+ntfs [google.com]

it's already shipping with Linux

[idlake]

Linux already has the technologies that comprise WinFS: generic metadata (e.g., ReiserFS 4), file alternation monitoring (e.g., FAM, dnotify), and higher level functionality being built on it (e.g., rlocate, Beagle, Dashboard, etc.).

Which of these "stick" on the Linux platform in the end will be decided by users. I think indexing and search will be popular, but more complex metadata schemes won't be.

It beats me why it is taking Microsoft so long to get their act together on this one.

Logical move

[DeepDarkSky]

Getting WinFS out there means they can work out more kinks before release of Longhorn and at the same time provide the "benefits" of WinFS to people earlier. Separating out key pieces of the OS is always good for the still changing OS. Similar to the Linux/UNIX FSes, after all. This will make the transition to Longhorn "smoother".

Re:Excuse my ignorance but...

[Anita Coney]

The point of WinFS has nothing to do with making searches easier. If Microsoft really wanted to make searching your hard drive easier, it could simply include a better search app than the crappy one currently built it.

The point of WinFS is to make it illegal (i.e., a patent violation) for third party OSes to network with and access to Windows boxes.

Re:Sure...

[Qzukk]

ext3 is ext2 with a journal, thats all.

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.

Re:WinFS

[That's Unpossible!]

Answer one question: Why shouldn't your file system be a search engine? The file system is charged with organizing, protecting, and allowing access to the data stored "permanently" on your hard drive. It is only logical to want to make improvements to it to allow metadata and easier searching of the data.

Whether WinFS can deliver that is another issue entirely, but I sure as hell don't see a problem with this type of improvement in file systems.

Hell, why not go back to FAT? After all, why should your file system log transactions to prevent having to fsck your disk on reboot after failure? Why should your file system offer integrated encryption?

Re:Rushed?

[Schnapple]

One hopes that this has not been rushed out?

IIRC, this has been in the works for more than a decade. I get what you're saying - one minute it won't make Longhorn, the next it's going to be in XP - but "rushed" isn't the term here.

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.

Re:Sure...

[superjaded]

Actually, no.

From how I understand it, WinFS will actually be a layer of abstraction above whatever underlying filesystem (FAT32/NTFS) the system is running on. It won't be a new filesystem at all. It holds metadata about each file and makes it easier and faster to find things. Much like the aforementioned Beagle [gnome.org] project.

And ext3's journalling is quite different from what WinFS attempts to accomplish. Journalling basically makes it so, like you say, files aren't lost and you don't have to do a time-consuming fsck whenever the partition is not unmounted cleanly like with ext2.

Re:What's left for Longhorn?

[DarkMantle]

According to Microsofts Tech Net [microsoft.com] (subsriber section only) MS has incorperated much Unix technology into it's new Longhorn OS.

That said, most current applications won't run on it. However it does state there will be a program to emulate older versions of Windows to allow those applications to run. Crossover Office [codeweavers.com] anyone?

Re:And I care why?

[MightyMartian]

If that's the case, then it's just Extended Attributes ala OS/2. You could store all sorts of things in EAs, customized fields, information on what programs could open the file (overriding system defaults). I really miss that in the Windows products, and it's a big reason why I've always felt the Chicago GUI and its successors were nothing more than stunted cousins of OS/2's Workplace Shell.

The pitiful state of stock OS file search in 2005

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

Ahahahaha. Let's review.

1) Run a file search on Windows. Go get a coffee and then see the results. Realize that you can only search on basic attributes of the file, like name/dates/raw content.
2) Run a file search on OS X. Click your heels twice and then see the results. Still, you're limited to some basic attributes.

Some months (or years, in the case of WinFS) from now...
3) Run a file search on WinFS. In theory you get hits pretty damn quickly, if they ever finish this technology. I'm not sure yet what extra file info you'll be able to search on, but I imagine it's more than the basics.
4) Run a file search on OS X Tiger. Not only is your search blindingly fast, but you can search on arbitrary file metadata (it will index things like EXIF data, ID3 tags etc). Also, you can save stock searches which will automatically update when new matches appear in the FS. I believe this technology was brought over with BeOS coders.

I am so used to the OS X file search speed and Mail.app search speed that on my work Windows laptop I was forced to buy X1.com's search tool to get around the incredibly annoying (when you're not desensitized to it) delay when searching in either Windows Explorer or Outlook. The market for this utility should frankly not even exist. It should be the responsibility of the OS to help you find things as quickly as possible, and it should have been done YESTERDAY. I mean Jesus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to embed something like a SQLite [sqlite.org] engine in your email client code.

I'm glad that Microsoft is finally getting around to this (someday) but in the meantime I will be quite happy when Apple's Tiger shows up on my doorstep early this summer.

off topic, why can't we have ext3 for Windows?

[Mustang Matt]

Can someone give me the short answer as to why we can't support filesystems like ext3 or reiser under windows?

I imagine the problem is that it can't plug in to the windows kernel well enough but I'm still curious. Seems like it would be a really neat idea if it were possible.

Re:Sure...

[Richard_at_work]

Slightly different - NTFS is more like Ext3 than WinFS is, being that both NTFS and Ext3 are journelled filesystems. WinFS sits ontop of a standard NTFS filesystem, and stores metadata for objects stored on the filesystem. For example, all of your photos currently sit on your filesystem in a flat format - you arrange them in a filesystem tree based on date taken, location, project etc etc and they each have some meta data of their own, such as camera type, resolution and such.

WinFS will allow you to add more meta data to those images, storing the Location, Date taken etc information right there with the image, rather than in the filesystem tree. This allows you to get rid of folders altogether, and have a situation more similiar to the labels system in Gmail - a photo can now be in several 'folders', eg location, resolution, project, allowing you to group dissimiliar items together without having to maintain seperate copies of an item, or symlinks etc.

This way you can submit a search saying 'ok, give me all items to do with last years holiday' which could return stuff like all the emails you had with the travel company, all your bookmarks you made when looking for the holiday, the photos you took while on holiday etc.

What's the point

[nilbog]

I don't understand how this is a good decision for Microsoft. Sure WinFS would be a nice feature on XP - but why would they backport the only thing that makes Longhorn worthwhile to XP? Don't they want Longhorn to stand out?

In other words

[bonch]

In other words, there isn't a single reason to upgrade to Longhorn.

1.) .NET? Available for XP.
2.) Avalon? Available for XP.
3.) Indigo? Available for XP.

And now...

4.) WinFS? Available for XP.

Apparently, the only thing Longhorn will offer over Windows XP is a Direct3D interface that requires you to upgrade your computer in order to run it.

Perhaps Longhorn always should have been just a collection of technologies released for existing versions of Windows rather than a whole upgrade. Because I don't see many people upgrading with all of Longhorn's technologies being made available for Windows XP anyway.

Distributed WinFS databases performance (link)

[cshay]

Here's an interesting blog entry about this issue:

http://blog.hackedbrain.com/archive/2004/12/13/277 .aspx [hackedbrain.com]

Tiger Spotlight

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, Microsoft is planning to provide an update on the technology at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September, he said.

Meanwhile, I'll actually be USING such technology on my Mac mini.

Seriously, it's taken Microsoft a decade to get this off the ground, and Apple decides to implement it between OS X updates and gets it out the door. What's up at Microsoft?

Re:off topic, why can't we have ext3 for Windows?

[Pop69]

Um, who says you can't support reiser (read only at least) ?

http://p-nand-q.com/download/rfstool.html [p-nand-q.com]

New plan for Longhorn?

[raider_red]

So is this the new development plan for Longhorn? Rolling it out in chunks instead of one coherent release?

It kind of makes sense to me. This way, they'll have some field testing of the key technologies and they'll be able to use the longer development cycle to work out more bugs.

Re:Excuse my ignorance but...

[Swamii]

That's a decent way to do it, and is pretty much what Windows XP does. However, I would argue that common home users know nothing of wildcard characters. An improved way would be to give them a familiar web-like interface for searching their documents and files. And instead of wildcard characters, give some GUI options for specifying the type of file ("program? document? etc.")

Re:And I care why? - MS MArket share, thats why

[blowdart]

WinFS is not just some sort of search. They already have that with MSN Search.

WinFS an API to store objects at a file system level, indexing and streaming potential to file-based data. WinFS data can be structured with an XML schema to explain meaning and purpose. Data can also be semi-structured or unstructured. You can extend the FS with your own properties. WinFS come with a set of services such as synchronization, notification, a unified store and a common security model. Data, and files can have types, properties, fields, relationships, even constraints.

You're no longer using files, you're using full blown objects.

Ummm... dupe from a while ago?

[shoptroll]

Wasn't this announced a long time ago? I swear there was an article several months to a year ago, stating that MS was abandoning the WinFS and 3D-Windowing features of Longhorn in order to get it out sooner. There was talk of integrating it into XP at some point instead of holding it off until Longhorn was done, since LH's release date kept being shifted back. There was some other features they were moving to XP too I think.

Re:And I care why?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of good tools/applications for each platform, many of which are either unavailable or poorly implemented on the other. I used to run BSD and Linux alongside Windows, but my new laptop doesn't get along with Linux or BSD, so I only run Windows (XP Professional) now. Microsoft's Services for UNIX blunts some of the pain of losing the BSD/Linux command line, but I still miss it from time to time.

Even if I could run Linux/BSD (well), I'd still probably spend most of my time in Windows, because of Office among other things. When using Linux/BSD, though, it would be nice to have full access to my files on the NTFS partition, especially with proper security mappings.

Re:Aha, that explains it ...

[ottothecow]

I would venture to guess that they are attempting to allow older systems to use it because NTFS is to close to being as good as FAT under linux.

If more people start using winFS, it becomes that much harder to make a linux switch.

And we have already seen what they think about Wine.

Re:Tiger Spotlight

[hunterx11]

WinFS is indeed more revolutionary than Spotlight, but to end users it makes no difference if something is implemented at such a low level as the filesystem. What does make a difference is if it ever actually gets released. By the way,

ABAddressBook * addressBook = [ABAddressBook sharedAddressBook];
[addressbook addRecord:myRecord];
[addressBook save];