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."

Aha, that explains it ...

[ggvaidya]

I thought the Bill-Gates-as-borg icon had a slightly wider smile today ...

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.

Sure...

[Quasar1999]

I'll believe it when I see it... my sources inside MS (and no, I ain't giving any proof, so believe me or not, I don't give a shit), say that there are very hard deadlines for Longhorn, with features being left out if they don't meet certain benchmarks, etc... so to hear that they are now taking something, and wasting resources back porting it? Especially when they first said it would be dropped from longhorn? I call Bull..

Re:Sure...

[maeka]

I'll believe it when I see it... my sources inside MS (and no, I ain't giving any proof, so believe me or not, I don't give a shit), say that there are very hard deadlines for Longhorn, with features being left out if they don't meet certain benchmarks, etc... so to hear that they are now taking something, and wasting resources back porting it?

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...

[wolfgang_spangler]

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.

I think you misspelled "monopoly"

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:Sure...

[antoy]

Especially when they first said it would be dropped from longhorn? I call Bull..

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?

[KarmaMB84]

That's not what they're saying. For one thing, WinFS won't even be in Longhorn but will apparently be avaiable for WinXP as well as Longhorn when they do finish it.

Re:Sure...

[hawkbug]

I agree - WinFS scares me. I believe ext3 is sort of like WinFS, is it not? I was scared of ext3 but I heard that since it was "journaled", it would eliminate files going missing if your machine was hard powered off. I've had very good luck with ext3, and if WinFS is going to be similar, it might not be all that bad - but then again, look who's actually developing it.

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.

link to that book

[morcheeba]

The book you're talking about is "Practical File System Design with the Be file system".

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...

[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.

WinFS is a horrible fix for a stupid mistake

[Spy der Mann]

I recall my good ol' DOS times.

Here's more or less a list of my directories:
C:\DOCS
C:\DOCS\HOMEWORK
C:\DOCS\J OB
C:\GAMES
C:\GAMES\3D
C:\GAMES\ADVENTUR
C:\G AMES\PLATFORM
C:\LENG\BC
C:\LENG\TP
C:\PICS
C: \WIN95 -- my custom "WINDOWS" directory.
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...

[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.

Re:Sure...

[0racle]

If the entire fs is turned into a database by using indexes, what exactly is indexed?

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)

[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.

Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS)

[mrseigen]

ext2 and ext3 are supported by third-party drivers; I imagine the same is true for reiser.

Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS)

[wrecked]

Not Reiser4, but there are some tools to access Reiser3 from Windows: RFSTool [freshmeat.net], and YAReG [akucom.de], a graphical frontend for RFSTool.

Re:How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS)

[marcello_dl]

I'd love to be able to use a filesystem that can be seen in a dual-boot environment;

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)

[Jugalator]

Yes, Windows most likely can support that. I mean, it does support ext3 [swin.edu.au], ReiserFS, and even ext2 with write support [sourceforge.net]. So I think there's nothing technically in the way. The problem is probably being lack of driver developers. ;-)

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.

Re:WinFS

[Ironsides]

I mean, jesus, its a file system, not a damn search engine.

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

[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 searc

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:WinFS

[optimus2861]

So where's the metadata come from?

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

[naelurec]

If you had the opportunity to better define what each item was, that you would.

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 .. in the open dialog, it has the meta fields there for search..)

I can see where it is useful .. ever since I started using JuK, I have found myself utilizing the ID3 tags on my music a LOT more. For one thing, it is built into the interface and allows flexibility (i

Re:WinFS

[ThosLives]

This is all well and good, except that unless there is a way to automatically determine metadata, or the person creating the document can forsee what type of metadata searches people in the future will use, this will not be that great a thing. In fact, it sounds like it will add all sorts of process overhead.

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...

[SuperKendall]

I think asking users to define metadata is a wasted effort. While users can tag data, it's a huge chore...

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

[goofyspouse]

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

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

[amightywind]

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

[selectspec]

What would be really interesting is for Microsoft to compare a desktop WinFS deployment use scenario to a system with NTFS with file indexing enabled.

Re:WinFS

[XzeroR3]

My google [google.com] partition works well.

Re:WinFS

[Swamii]

It may be 'fine' as you see it; then again, searching my Windows box using the standard Windows search was also 'fine' until I started using tools like Google Desktop Search.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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 your temporary files, making sure the user or some other program hasn't royally screwed you configuration files, just to name a few. With a database-backed file system, the deve

Re:WinFS

[Swamii]

While what you say mostly sounds good, let's see all of them in practice:

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

[sterno]

One major problem with NTFS is the fact that it's still prone to fragmenting. Every so often I have to run a defragmenter or my system just starts churning when I need to do any disk access. I've never had to do this on a Linux box becaue the filesystem is designed to avoid that.

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

[lgw]

All file systems claim they "don't need defragmenting" when they are released. Mostly that means they "don't come with a defragging tool". It's all hype. The only filesystem that really doesn't need defragmenting is one that runs a defragmenter all the time as a background process - which, of course, you can do with NTFS if you really want to.

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

[hunterx11]

The only filesystem that really doesn't need defragmenting is one that runs a defragmenter all the time as a background process

Or one that defragments files when you open them, like HFS+ [kernelthread.com].

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

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) 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

[Doc Ruby]

WinFS announcements are one of Microsoft's most popular products. Thanks for the upgrade!

Seriously

[bonch]

This is just a response to kill the buzz on Apple's Spotlight, which is actually shipping. When some competitor starts to make gains, Microsoft just lets loose that they're "working" on things sometime in the future to make the shareholders happy and to keep their name in the press.

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:Longhorn

[jerichohol]

It will be probably XP SP6 by the time it is released.

Re:Longhorn

[rsborg]

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?

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

[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"

Re:Longhorn

[sporty]

Maybe it's all an elaborate ploy. Get people all hyped up for longhorn, and start eeking features back so more people buy it that way and the upgrades that get backported?

Re:Longhorn

[Sheetrock]

Expect seamless integration of these features, as well as the best support options, to be available in Longhorn.

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

[man_of_mr_e]

People don't just upgrade overnight. It's going to take longhorn several years to become as entrenched as XP now is. In fact, it probably won't be until the next version of Windows is about to be released that Longhorn may become the majority or Windows boxes.

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

[Darth_Burrito]

Maybe the question to ask is how much money does microsoft make from the upgrade market versus how much they stand to make from being nice to their customer base. I imagine that very few people buy upgrades. As for organizations, I imagine that if an orgranization insists on having the latest windows software, they probably have some kind of licensing agreement that gives them "free" upgrades while simultaneously locking them into the agreement.

For example, at Ohio State University, we recently went f

What's left for Longhorn?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

[loraksus]

You'll find out in 2010.

Re:What's left for Longhorn?

[SmokeHalo]

The remaining functionality is called "fundamentals". Here's a link to an episode of The .NET Show [microsoft.com] that has a discussion of these "fundamentals". From the link:

Longhorn "Fundamentals" is an important part of what we feel is part of the core experience of Longhorn. It includes User Experience, System Security, Application Deployment, System Manageability, as well as many other features and capabilities.

Sounds perfectly nondescript to me, simply some buzzwords thrown together to give the impression of sta

They worry more about Linux than upgrades

[3770]

I don't think that Microsoft is concerned about users wanting to upgrade Win XP and Server 2003.

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?

[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:What's left for Longhorn?

[mormop]

The name?

Re:What's left for Longhorn?

[Proaxiom]

Parental controls on things like amount of time a user can play a particular game, use an application, or browse the web (while this may seem pointless to most geeks, as a parent I know this will be useful).

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

And now what reason do I have to upgrade to longhorn?

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?

[theparanoidcynic]

Don't worry. I'm sure that the cracked version that gets released a week before it ships will take care of the second and third points.

Actually, by the time Longhorn actually ships Linux 3.2 will be stable. That will take care of all three.

Microsoft has hired...

[lbmouse]

Frankie Avalon [history-of-rock.com] and The Indigo Girls? [indigogirls.com]

Re:Microsoft has hired...

[terraformer]

Microsoft has hired...Frankie Avalon and The Indigo Girls?

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?

[Black Cardinal]

After all, they probably want to give people an incentive to migrate their servers, but realize that servers with WinFS will be adopted more quickly if the large installed base of WinXP clients can work with it. But if Server 2003 can support it as well, then there goes one reason to migrate.

"Technology"

[hey]

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

Re:"Technology"

[Sloppy]

But a component or a chunk can suck. A "technology" never sucks. A "technology" can merely be improperly used or underused, or at worst, superceded by even newer "technology." And anyone can call bullshit on Microsoft crap, but if you call bullshit on anyone's "technology," you're a luddite.

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??

[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.

Standard??

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I think that the most important Question here is ... is microsoft going to provide an specification for the fs?, and, in case they do, will it be licensed in a GPL-compatible way?

Re:Standard??

[theparanoidcynic]

Open standards? Microsoft?

Oh wait, you were serious. Hang on while I laugh harder.

Is this compelling?

[Matey-O]

There's another File System structure Microsoft worked on: WebDAV. They built a couple of file management suites on it. It's gone, largely, nowhere.

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?

[SweetAndSourJesus]

WebDAV...It's gone, largely, nowhere.

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...

[nuggetman]

Apple releases Tiger with Spotlight
MS adds WinFS to XP, says "Hey, we can do that too, you don't need to wait for Longhorn!"

Can't wait!

[Ancient_Hacker]

ooooh, o00000h, oooooooh! Can't wait.

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..

[loraksus]

Longhorn won't come out until 2010 or so, and Microsoft will be able to charge for "Windows 98^K^KXP Special Edition".
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..

[jay-be-em]

"Look, I'm not saying that MS isn't innovating anything, but compared to everyone else, they move at a glacial pace."

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

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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:Excuse my ignorance but...

[idlake]

Give an option for the metadata to be transmitted separately

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...

[Swamii]

what's the point of a search engine built into the filesystem? ... keeping files in a logical directory structure along with copious use of find and grep commands seems to be good enough.

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...

[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.")

locate locate locate

[gosand]

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.

You should really check into 'locate'. I pretty much forgot how to use 'find' after discovering it.

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".

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.

We are outgrowing filesystems.

[jay-be-em]

I think the traditional concept of a filesystem with data organized within directories is beginning to show its age.

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?

[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.

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:Ummm... dupe from a while ago?

[shoptroll]

I was lazy and should've grabbed a link from the old article. Here it is: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/27/195025 7&tid=201&tid=1 [slashdot.org]

Re:And I care why?

[mboverload]

Because now no other OS but Windows will be able to read the filesystem. Just another impediment to the adoption and inter-operability of Windows and Linux.

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?

[ziggythehamster]

WinFS is not actually a filesystem. It's basically NTFS+ (compare to HFS+). If a computer that only understands NTFS reads the disk, it'll look like an NTFS disk. If WinFS is enabled, the indexes become avaliable. Basically, it's the Indexing Service on steriods. Or, at least, that's how I'm understanding it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

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?

[evn]

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).

For traditional file-based data, such as text documents, audio tracks, and video clips, WinFS is the new Windows file system. Typically, you will store the main data of a file, the file stream, as a file on an NTFS volume. However, whenever you call an API that changes or adds items with NTFS file stream parts, WinFS extracts the metadata from the stream and adds the metadata to the WinFS store.

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

[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

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:And I care why?

[flumps]

It stores meta data along with all your files, so ... you have to spend more money on a bigger hard drive! Yay!

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.

Re:It never has been

[cens0r]

I don't remember them ever saying it would be dropped from longhorn. They did say the WinFS file searches would not be supported across network shares. But that was it.

Re:Umm, wait...

[Narchie Troll]

Windows Server 2003
WinXP

Different products. What's the issue?

Re:Can't wait.

[arkanes]

If you manage to sucker enough people to get your mac mini, you'll be happy to find out that Spotlight, which will be in the next version of OS X, does all this stuff except better. Like you don't haat to "attach XML metadata to files" (and seriously, who wants to query XML with SQL anyway?). http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/spotlight. html [apple.com]

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.

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.

Re:In other words

[TheNetAvenger]

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.

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

[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];