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journal: win
WinFS is dead
From the “Could have been that never really was” desk…
WinFS, the long-awaited data storage system for Microsoft Windows, will no longer be delivered as a standalone product, according to Quentin Clark of Microsoft’s WinFS Blog. However, while the WinFS project is dead, bits and pieces that were completed will be rolled into ADO.NET (a developer technology for data access) and Microsoft SQL Server.
For those who haven’t been following WinFS’s development, it was being developed by Microsoft to replace or supplement today’s file systems with a data management system based on relational databases. Organizing data would no longer have to be done manually, but by metadata attributes (for example, author, keywords, and such). Current operating systems have some of these capabilities through technologies like Mac OS X’s Smart Folders, but WinFS would have gone beyond this. There are other aspects beyond this, such as making sharing data between applications easier. The Wikipedia entry on WinFS provides (lots) more information.
WinFS has its roots in Microsoft’s failed Cairo project from the early 1990s, which was an attempt to develop a next-generation operating system. WinFS was initially meant to be included with Windows Vista, then codenamed Longhorn. It was actually included with an alpha release of Longhorn, but suffered from serious performance problems. Microsoft separated WinFS from Longhorn in August 2004, and announced that it would ship later.
Deep Thought’s Take: What doomed WinFS? If you were to ask me, I would guess that is simply was too ambitious of a project. It was in many respects an attempt by Microsoft to reinvent the wheel, whereas other projects like Spotlight and BeFS are more like attempts to improve upon the existing wheel. At some point the wheel most likely will be reinvented, but this clearly wasn’t the time or the place.
More Info
What’s in Store: WinFS Update
Wikipedia article on WinFS
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10 | 2163 |
| Nick | comments | views |
thinkback
Fixed the BeFS link, though I don’t know if that’s the one Nick intended for or not. It should work just fine though.
| Jun. 25, 2006 | |
| Arden | 12:39 am |
Spotlight, as it stands today, is about as related to WinFS and BeFS as Windows Explorer or the Finder. It simply isn’t a file system in anyway shape or form.
Except the creator of Spotlight also created BeFS. So I’d say Spotlight is more related to BeFS than Windows Explorer. 
| Jun. 25, 2006 | ||
| 9:31 am |
Yes, I intended the BeFS link to go to Wikipedia. Thanks for catching that, RoadRunner, and thanks for fixing it, Arden.
WinFS was implemented on top of NTFS for just that reason. It didn’t reinvent anything. BeFS reinvented the wheel because it wasn’t tacked on to the file system like WinFS was. In the case of BeFS that was probably the best option though.
Good point, RR, but the way I understood it is that WinFS was an attempt to go beyond what BeFS and technologies like Spotlight and Vista’s search and organization tools offer. I saw BeFS as being able to basically do what Spotlight and Vista can do, while one of WinFS’s goals was to essentially make the location of the files irrelevant, while in stuff out there today, file location is still a major part of organization.
| Nick | Jun. 25, 2006 | |
| 10:52 am |
Except the creator of Spotlight also created BeFS. So I’d say Spotlight is more related to BeFS than Windows Explorer.
That seems kind of irrelevant, though. I mean, Alexander Nobel created both dynamite and the Nobel Prizes, does that mean they’re related too?
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| Jun. 25, 2006 | |
| Arden | 3:28 pm |
That seems kind of irrelevant, though. I mean, Alexander Nobel created both dynamite and the Nobel Prizes, does that mean they’re related too?
The relation would be their creators, right?
Well, it was humor anyway, hence the smiley face.
| Jun. 25, 2006 | ||
| 4:29 pm |
That seems kind of irrelevant, though. I mean, Alexander Nobel created both dynamite and the Nobel Prizes, does that mean they’re related too?
Alfred, Arden, Alfred! 
I’m a swede too so I should know.
| Jun. 27, 2006 | |
| 1:52 am |
Spotlight, as it stands today, is about as related to WinFS and BeFS as Windows Explorer or the Finder. It simply isn’t a file system in anyway shape or form.
Spotlight is alive and working, so it’s the only one interesting to talk about.
I don’t get it, why do people tend to talk so much about things which don’t exist and never will? Because it’s from MS?
I’d be angry because of all the broken promises if I was a MS customer. 
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| Jun. 27, 2006 | |
| 2:00 am |
I’d be angry because of all the broken promises if I was a MS customer.
Yes, I much prefer being completely in the dark until it’s about to be released. It’s like those Mac rumormongers. They get all excited about something they think Apple is going to release, and then get disappointed when a great product from Apple ships but isn’t as grand as the rumor predicted.
They never learn.
But I never believed the fantasy-talk we got about WinFS. Not for a minute. “In the future, we will have flying cars!!!”
By now, everyone should take Microsoft’s “demonstrations” with a grain of salt.
Having said all that, I’m excited about Vista. The UI still has things that I can’t stand (task bar, Start Menu, MDI/SDI, too many UI widgets everywhere not in logical order) but there are definite improvements. I’ll probably build myself an AMD-based system just for Vista for little money next spring.
What’s the least expensive video card that gives me all the Vista goodies? 6800? I can’t bring myself to spend $500 just for a video card anymore.
| Jun. 27, 2006 | ||
| 9:27 am |
1.
The link to BeFS goes to http://www.dtgeeks.com/index.php/news/comme nt/winfs_is_dead/
What doomed WinFS?
Ray Ozzie. Gates said he had to campaign to Ray to keep WinFS. It looks like he failed.
It was in many respects an attempt by Microsoft to reinvent the wheel, whereas other projects like Spotlight and BeFS are more like attempts to improve upon the existing wheel. At some point the wheel most likely will be reinvented, but this clearly wasn’t the time or the place.
WinFS was implemented on top of NTFS for just that reason. It didn’t reinvent anything. BeFS reinvented the wheel because it wasn’t tacked on to the file system like WinFS was. In the case of BeFS that was probably the best option though.
Spotlight, as it stands today, is about as related to WinFS and BeFS as Windows Explorer or the Finder. It simply isn’t a file system in anyway shape or form.