WinFS to be available in WinXP 428
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."
Aha, that explains it ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Aha, that explains it ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Funny)
I think you misspelled "monopoly"
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.
Re:Sure... (Score:4, Informative)
It has been dropped from Longhorn. WinFS is now an entirely separate project and, simply, all connections that existed between Longhorn and WinFS are being removed.
Just because Longhorn has very hard deadlines doesn't mean that masses of MS developers swarmed into the project, like some sort of a really nerdy LOTR scene. WinFS was shown the door regarding Longhorn inclusion, but that doesn't mean the WinFS team was dismantled. It will continue, but with slightly different targets and no consumer-side deadline.
I don't see why it's hard to see how a company can work two projects in parallel, especially a company the size of Microsoft. They probably have hundreds.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
link to that book (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the slashdot article on it [slashdot.org] and here's a pdf of the book direct from the author's site. [nobius.org]
It looks interesting, but it's been on my to-read list for a while.
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
WinFS is a horrible fix for a stupid mistake (Score:4, Informative)
Here's more or less a list of my directories:
C:\DOCS
C:\DOCS\HOMEWORK
C:\DOCS\
C:\GAMES
C:\GAMES\3D
C:\GAMES\ADVENTUR
C:\
C:\LENG\BC
C:\LENG\TP
C:\PICS
C
C:\WIN98
C:\WP
So I could organize myself. Now, do you know what Microsoft did?
C:\Program Files\app 1
C:\Program Files\app 2
C:\Program Files\app 3
C:\Program Files\app 9,999
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\doc1
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\doc2
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\doc3
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\docN
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\My Images\img1
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\My Images\img2
C:\Documents and Settings\me\My Documents\My Images\imgN
Suddenly, the worst happens. My start menu is erased! Or my config got erased!
*cries* WAH!!! I lost one of my files! Where is it? They were on "My Documents", I swear!!
If Microsoft had ALLOWED the users to specify CATEGORIES for program installations... as in "Create Category", etc and made THIS feature an integral part of the system
("A certified WinXP application will present the "category" dialogue when installing something),
we wouldn't NEED WinFS at all.
Now that I think of it, here's a new motto for Microsoft:
"What do you want to hide today?"
Re:Sure... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Sure... (Score:3, Insightful)
Everything. You could search by every image file that would scale to a wallpaper. Every MP3 by some group with a bitrate of 128kbps. Every word file that was modified by Jane after February 2. You can index a large amount of information about the files themselves, the term is metadata. Right click a word or excel file and look at its properties, you could search by all that.
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:2)
Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS) (Score:3, Informative)
The "captive NTFS" driver that was easily installable in a kanotix [kanotix.org] environment seemed to work well enough, even for writing. I am not spending much time on intel linux so YMMV.
Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS) (Score:4, Informative)
WinFS (Score:4, Interesting)
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]
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Interesting)
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 searc
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Interesting)
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:WinFS (Score:2)
I would think it must be something akin to Windows Indexing Service -- which is always among the first services I kill on any new Windows install, FWIW.
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming that it is _easy_ to do and doesn't require a significant departure from our current model (ie in the save dialog, it has the meta fields there for entry
I can see where it is useful
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Insightful)
I know, for instance, that in my company we'd have to develop a process for writing the metadata, reviewing the metadata, and that sort of thing. Adding more data to something isn't going to improve th
That's why I like the spotlight approach... (Score:3, Insightful)
Spotlight I think has the best compromise. Modules that can define meta-data from document contents themselves. Most document formats that people would want to search already have a means of storing meta-data (like EXIF for pictures) so just let people modify this meta-data as appropriate with tools specific to the format, and encourage new app writers to generate documents with room for meta-data a
Re:WinFS (Score:5, Funny)
Man: WinFS is a desert topping.
Woman: No, it's a floor wax.
Man: Desert topping!
Woman: Floor wax!
Announcer: You are both right...WinFS is both a desert topping *and* a floor wax.
Lousy directory structure (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Being a GNU/Linux user with a light well-organised Gentoo system at home, I often wondered about statements like this. But in the last few year
Re:WinFS (Score:2)
Re:WinFS (Score:2, Funny)
Re:WinFS (Score:2)
As a developer, WinFS's usefulness is obvious: storing desktop application settings, configuration, temporary files, even serialized runtime objects, is a royal pain when having to worry about actual files on disk. You have to worry about asynchronous file I/O, duplicate files, making sure directories exist, making sure you clean up yo
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Funny)
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Informative)
The registry: hundred of applications forget to rmeove registry settings upon uninstall. Try running Norton System Works and running the registry cleanup editor; hundreds if not thousands of entries are reported as dead, and should've been cleaned up when the app was uninstalled.
Temporary files: go into your temporary files directory and see the hundreds, if not thousands, of files and directories that are no longer in use, but eatin
NTFS Sucks (Score:3, Insightful)
So, will WinFS finally get this figured out or are they just going to make something more complex and bug prone without fixing a fundamental design issue from their previous filesystem?
Re:NTFS Sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd bet you're seeing a syptom of the common software installers (and how they deal with compressed files) on Windows vs Linux, not the filesystems.
Re:NTFS Sucks (Score:4, Informative)
Or one that defragments files when you open them, like HFS+ [kernelthread.com].
Re:WinFS (Score:3, Interesting)
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
The pitiful state of stock OS file search in 2005 (Score:3, Insightful)
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) 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
WinVapor (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously (Score:3, Insightful)
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:2, Funny)
Re:Longhorn (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple... claim that Longhorn is *much* more secure (and actually deliver, by taking some advice and shutting off certain "features" in legacy windows). So if you *want* to keep using the insecure POS that is XP, sure go ahead... otherwise, pay up for Longhorn... oh, and btw, we have all these SW vendors that are releasing at the s
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"
Re:Longhorn (Score:2)
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.
Re:Longhorn (Score:3, Insightful)
That means, if they want people to develop for WinFS, Avalon, Indigo, etc.. they best make it available for XP and 2003.
My prediction is that Longhorn will be like Windows 2000. It will be adopted by the serious people, but most users will skip it
Re:Longhorn (Score:3, Informative)
For example, at Ohio State University, we recently went f
What's left for Longhorn? (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that every major component that Microsoft has promoted for Longhorn is eventually being backported to Windows XP. What's going to be new in Longhorn?
Re:What's left for Longhorn? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's left for Longhorn? (Score:3, Informative)
Sounds perfectly nondescript to me, simply some buzzwords thrown together to give the impression of sta
They worry more about Linux than upgrades (Score:3, Insightful)
What Microsoft is concerned about, I think, is to evolve their product to remain competitive with the alternatives, such as Linux, so that the new desktop or server that someone buys, will run windows.
The days when people upgraded the OS on their servers and desktops because a new version was out are over.
So they don't need to motivate why a user should upgrade from XP to Longhorn, with the cost that that enta
Re:What's left for Longhorn? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:What's left for Longhorn? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's left for Longhorn? (Score:5, Funny)
Me too. I feel it is important for my children to figure out how to circumvent protection measures like this, thus adding a little extra education to their computing experience.
Kind of like: "Of course you can play Mickey Mouse Toddler, as soon as you crack the password-based encryption I put on the executable. And what do I keep telling you about leaving your Legos on the floor?"
Why Longhorn? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh Wait
1. Slower Performance. Why would I acctually want free system resources?
2. DRM, Who doesn't want their rights managed by M$
3. Spending More Money. Who doesn't want to give their money to M$, really?
Re:Why Longhorn? (Score:4, Funny)
Actually, by the time Longhorn actually ships Linux 3.2 will be stable. That will take care of all three.
Microsoft has hired... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Microsoft has hired... (Score:2)
Aww hell... I can see some marketing "genius" reading that and saying to themselves what a great launch party gag it would be to have performers with then same names as the code names for the products being launched. And I thought the Rolling Stones and "Start Me Up" was bad...
Maybe won't be ported to Server 2003? (Score:3, Informative)
"Technology" (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Technology" (Score:2, Insightful)
BTW, it's not just MS, but all of their kind. For example, some might debate the usefulness of hyperthreading, but no one would deny that "hyperthreading technology" is a neat thing.
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)
Re:Standard?? (Score:3, Funny)
Oh wait, you were serious. Hang on while I laugh harder.
Is this compelling? (Score:2)
It's JUST enough to make the things that aren't supported a royal pain to implement. Dropping another filesystem in your OS just Must Always Work. Otherwise, no one will use it. We've got a Sharepoint Portal Server that sits largely idle because it didn;t have 100% backing from Microsoft.
Re:Is this compelling? (Score:2, Informative)
Mac OS X uses WebDav to mount iDisks. Tons of web developers use it in Dreamweaver.
I don't know if that's exactly somewhere, but it surely isn't nowhere.
Apple... (Score:2)
MS adds WinFS to XP, says "Hey, we can do that too, you don't need to wait for Longhorn!"
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.
Re:In other words.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now I'm no Apple fanboy (debian fanboy) but it is pretty startling how much Apple has been able to accomplish in the last several years compared to Microsoft.
A completely revamped, stable OS, the iTunes/iPod combination, Keynote, the entire iLife suite, a web browser, a new neat piece of hardware every year or so, a stable server os along with some nice SAN software, a quick X11 implementat
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Excuse my ignorance but... (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Excuse my ignorance but... (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such option in FTP, or in most other protocols.
XML of course, cuz it's 2005, or tacked onto the end of the file, in some cases, ala id3 tags, or whatever.
Well, if you "tack it on", it's part of the file.
Second, corp intranets, which is what this is primarily aimed at, probably aren't doing a whole lot of FTPing of internal documents.
Corporate intranets are using CMS, document management systems, P2P, instant messaging, E-mail attachments, etc. None of those have provisions for transmitting, storing, or indexing separate metadata forks.
Third, the existance of FTP and the like haven't stopped Apple's file system, or NTFS itself, from having things like resource streams.
NTFS has resource streams, but they are rarely used and they are actually kind of a security problem (viruses like to hide there, and even AV products often don't look there).
Apple's resource streams have led to a decade of incompatibility and usability problems for no appreciable gain in functionality over single-file multi-stream solutions based on standards like ZIP.
Proponents of hacking up the file system to add all these complicated features have failed to make a sound engineering argument for why the functionality justifies the complexity or why it needs to be in the kernel. And they have failed to do so for several decades (because these ideas are not new). At this point, when Apple and Microsoft are pushing this sort of thing, it looks like they are doing it out of proprietary interests, not out of any engineering considerations.
Re:Excuse my ignorance but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a fundamental basic of what's wrong with Linux:
Developer: "I use grope, pully, xtract, gunit, and other nonsensical named 3rd party tools AND I organize my files in a logical directory structure, which gives me everything I need!
User: "Where is my Word Document?"
Re:Excuse my ignorance but... (Score:3, Interesting)
locate locate locate (Score:3)
You should really check into 'locate'. I pretty much forgot how to use 'find' after discovering it.
it's already shipping with Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
off topic, why can't we have ext3 for Windows? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
We are outgrowing filesystems. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why bolt on things like DB functionality and version control features (this is coming eventually...) to a traditional filesystem model when these features fit neatly with the concept of a more generalized persistent object store system?
New plan for Longhorn? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Ummm... dupe from a while ago? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ummm... dupe from a while ago? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:And I care why? (Score:4, Insightful)
They STILL haven't figured out how to write to NTFS, they will never even figure out how to read now.
Re:And I care why? (Score:4, Insightful)
And if I am right, this will be one feature I'm turning off. The Indexing Service already pisses me off.
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.
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
Re:And I care why? (Score:3, Interesting)
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:And I care why? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:And I care why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It never has been (Score:2)
Re:Umm, wait... (Score:2, Informative)
WinXP
Different products. What's the issue?
Re:Can't wait. (Score:2)
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.
In other words (Score:5, Interesting)
1.)
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.
Re:In other words (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, this tends to be a win-win for Windows users. (Pardon any puns)
People that want to keep XP and hold out for Longhorn, can do so, and still get access to most upcoming 3rd party next generation applications.
Developers are also helped, as they can start using the next generation technologies and tools and ensure that their target market is going to
Re:Tiger Spotlight (Score:3, Interesting)