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Windows Operating Systems Software Microsoft IT

Longhorn to be Released in 2006, Sans WinFS 440

skillio writes "Everyone's favorite OS maven, Bill Gates, announced a release date for Longhorn on Friday. He confirms what many had suspected - Microsoft will attempt to complete this release in calendar year 2006. The most notable element of this announcement was Gates' admission that WinFS, Microsoft's next-generation file system, would not be complete in time for this release - surprising, since this was the most hyped component of the next iteration of Windows."
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Longhorn to be Released in 2006, Sans WinFS

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  • by weave ( 48069 ) * on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:51AM (#10095968) Journal
    Well, I'm so glad we switched to an annual assurance type plan where we pay an annual fee which gives us the right for all upgrades at no additional cost. Now they have little incentive to bring out upgrades since they will get that revenue stream regardless, no matter what.

    Actually, it might be a blessing. The pressure on IT to roll out new versions puts a real burden on us. We just got XP and 2003 server rolled out everywhere and I have a feeling we are *way* ahead of most other places.

    • by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:56AM (#10095992)
      You'll get all your upgrades anyway.

      Many of the components in longhorn will be rolled out as individual services prior to the official release.

      (Of course, Microsoft will package the official longhorn release with a few bells and whisltes to grab consumer interests.)

      SP2 is a great example of this. The pop-up blocker and buffer overrun protection were all original longhorn ideas.
      • by weave ( 48069 ) * on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:03AM (#10096039) Journal
        True, but we would have gotten all of that with an old fashioned perpetual license. I believe the assurance plans estimated savings based on a new release (that costs money) every two years.

        If there's a 5 year gap between OS releases, the finance people might start to question our decision to "take the easy way out" and go for the annual fee, which is a killer btw...

        • by Curtman ( 556920 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @11:14AM (#10096424)
          Prediction.. In a year and a half, Microsoft announces the real name of Longhorn:

          Windows XP SP3

          If XP is going to get Longhorn Technologies [slashdot.org], and Longhorn isn't going to get the rest (best?) of the "Longhorn Technologies", then thats all it is. A new service pack, just like XP was.
      • > The pop-up blocker and buffer overrun protection were all original longhorn ideas.

        This is yet another proof of how hard it has become for them to upgrage Internet Explorer. Adding just one feature requires an entire new operating system. Fortunatly, for SP2, Bill has outsourced the job. I'm sure 99% sure that the pop-up blocker in SP2 is stolen from Mozilla. Horray for open source!

        (Just joking)
        • This is yet another proof of how hard it has become for them to upgrage Internet Explorer. Adding just one feature requires an entire new operating system. Fortunatly, for SP2, Bill has outsourced the job. I'm sure 99% sure that the pop-up blocker in SP2 is stolen from Mozilla. Horray for open source!

          (Just joking)


          The idea of the popup blocker and the tabbed browsing were not their own idea. Competitors like opera and mozilla based browsers (mozilla, firefox and others) had those, so IE must have it to ke
      • by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:46AM (#10096257) Homepage
        I thought the buffer overrun protection was AMD's idea, with the NX page flag.
        • by Homology ( 639438 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @11:15AM (#10096432)


          I thought the buffer overrun protection was AMD's idea, with the NX page flag.



          NX (No eXecute) bit for CPU has been around for a while (for Alpha, and Sun's SPARC, for instance), and is not an AMD invention. On the other hand, AMD should be given credit for introducing such a security featuer in their new CPU. Intel has steadfastly refuced to implement such security features on x86, until forced by AMD.

    • by justsomebody ( 525308 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:54AM (#10096298) Journal
      Don't get me wrong, but... you are actualy happy you pay more for less???

      Either that or my brain-calc is broken.

      Cost Calculation:
      Updates for XP - $0
      Updates for your server - cost $0
      You are happy that there's no new releases of software - so if you wouldn't buy that software cost would be $0

      But you are happy that you are paying annual fee??? With that thinking in mind you'll soon be outsourced

      We just got XP and 2003 server rolled out everywhere and I have a feeling we are *way* ahead of most other places.


      I have all places still running Win2000 server (those few that still use Windows for server and all behind firewall), and it does it's job as it should. Tested version of 2003 didn't make enough progress to replace thing that worked for so long in such pleasurable manner. How do you define your *AHEAD*???
    • by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @11:01AM (#10096345) Homepage Journal
      I dropped of those years ago, as microsoft wasnt putting out product often enough to make it cost effective. ( they go along with the MOLP agreements.. )

      The other hidden problem that few people think about is that if you drop off the plan, ever, you loose the license to use what you have .. Then you have no software... Its a perpetual lease..

      Going retail prevents this problem.. Yes it costs more, and you don't get their 'enterprise support', but at least you are in control.
    • Now they have little incentive to bring out upgrades since they will get that revenue stream regardless, no matter what.

      Tell me about it. I work for a small/medium business, and we got burned on SQL Server 2000. The single CPU license with Software Assurance was like six grand, or 50% more than the license without SA.

      Microsoft (or one of their contractors) called us and asked about renewing our various SA agreements. The droid was seriously confused that I didn't want to take advantage of such a good
  • the later the better (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Edmund Blackadder ( 559735 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:53AM (#10095975)
    since that file system will probably break compatibility with everything non-windows it's delay is good for everyone.

    I wonder if they will decide to use it to lock out any third party application providers they dont like.
    • it wouldn't break things as it's going to be in practice an addon to the existing system.

      (like .net runtime or whatever)
    • by LO0G ( 606364 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:38AM (#10096225)
      Ok, lets get this straight, once and for all - WinFS IS NOT A NEW FILESYSTEM!

      It's a set of technologies that allow you to store metadata in a SQL-like database, and query for that information.

      Think of it as content indexing on steroids.

      So you winamp album metadata could be put in WinFS and then winamp (or WMP, or Soniq, or iTunes) could build virtual playlists from that metadata.

      Or your picture keywords could be put in and you'd be able to search that metadata using a single common API.

      It's NOT a new filesystem.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:53AM (#10095978)
    Am I the only one who thinks that "Longhorn" doesn't sound like an operating system but rather a name for a porn star? I can already see the advertisements: "Before the new Microsoft OS goes Gold, install Long Horn Silver!" In the context of men wearing tight MSN butterfly-man suits, it seems somehow appropriate...
  • Stepwise (Score:4, Interesting)

    by BoldAC ( 735721 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:53AM (#10095980)
    Likely each component will be rolled out seperately... and then it'll all be bundled (without the new file system) for the official longhorn release.

    Of course, they will package the new release with new bells and whistles to give people a reason to upgrade... but most function will be able to be obtained before the official "longhorn" release.

    SP2, for example, contains several aspects of longhorn that were forced to the users sooner. Examples are the pop-up blocker and the protected memory to prevent buffer overruns.

    • Re:Stepwise (Score:2, Informative)

      by BoldAC ( 735721 )
      woah... sorry to duplicate. I kept getting errors when I originally tried to post this so I thought that it didn't go through.

      Anyway, to keep from wasting space... here is the original slashdot article about longhorn meeting XP [slashdot.org]

      Here's an article discussing that several aspects of longhorn are actually in SP2. [winnetmag.com]
  • Yep. Avalon, the new-fangled window manager was also cut for the final release. Windows version Copland?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:55AM (#10095986)
    news of further delays is a kind of marketing in itself. logic of anticipation. lets just call it "Windows Stillborn" and forget about it.
  • DNF next? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Dreadlord ( 671979 )
    First it was HL2, Longhorn is second, what next? DNF??
  • by xjimhb ( 234034 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:57AM (#10096002) Homepage
    What was it - Cairo? Chicago? They ended up dumping them, and putting the "doable" stuff into their next "mainstream" product.

    My guess is that WinFS was turning out to be one of those grand and glorious ideas that was falling short of "doable" - at least any time short of 2041.
  • by rssrss ( 686344 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:58AM (#10096004)

    Allchin: Don't call it 'Shorthorn' [com.com]

    Well, now that you mention it. It seems like an apt moniker.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:58AM (#10096007)
    Do you remember back on July 12, 1979 at Chicago's Comiskey Park when radio jock Steve Dahl rode the rising setiment of anti-disco and held a promotional where if you brought a disco record to the game to be destroyed at half-time you would get an admission for only $0.98?

    It got me thinking about a little project I think would be at the very least, ammusing.

    Something like, a cordinated anti-MS day in about a year when LUGS all around the world get together on a certain day and destroy MS software as well as MS effigees to protest our discontent. I'm picturing piles of old win3.11 floppies and cds of 9x, NT, office, games, books, and hardware billowing thick tenticles of black smoke, smearing the sky with... I don't want to pollute the environment with smoke, especially with MS's taint, so make that piles of stuff to be blown up with demolitions and shattered with small arms fire.

    Then we could build a huge effigee of Bill Gates and Steve Balmer bowing before the penguin. Then have the penguin announce in a booming voice that tyanny in the land of Microsoft has to end and that his cleansing fire clean MS of dishonesty, at which time the penguin effigee would belch a fire ball that consumes the Bill Gates and Steve Balmer effigee.

    Heck, this could even be an annual event or a holiday comemerating a specific moment in history when man freed himself from one of the worst tyrranies this world has yet faced and to celebrate the general spirit of individuals who wish to free and those around them as well.

    This suggestion is to be taken with a grain of salt, but in a lot of ways, I'm serious. At the very least, if one LUG were to host something like this ala Burning Man style, I'm sure there would be a huge draw with resulting publicity and maybe some eyeopening in Redmond. However, it's time for the people to take to it Microsoft instead of them doing it the other way around.
    • Fuck it! If you're going to burn plastic, I'm gonna be there trying to stop you. As much as I hate Microsoft, the nature itself didn't do you any wrong. There's no need for dioxine in the environment.

      Yes, I'm part of the ecologist nazis. :)
    • Then we could build a huge effigee of Bill Gates and Steve Balmer bowing before the penguin. Then have the penguin announce in a booming voice that tyanny in the land of Microsoft has to end and that his cleansing fire clean MS of dishonesty, at which time the penguin effigee would belch a fire ball that consumes the Bill Gates and Steve Balmer effigee.

      "...and the Lord God said `thou shalt build no idols before me'..."

      "...and the number of the beast shall be 666"

      "...and I just saved a load of money on m
  • Count Me Out (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mattwolf7 ( 633112 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:58AM (#10096008)
    The article didn't mention, but is Longhorn still going to be a complete rewrite as they were talking about before?

    I doubt it if they are going to be putting it out in 2 years. So this is basically going to be Windows XP with a new UI, Avalon the new DirectX, Indigo a program "to allow software and services to work across networks and different devices." and some new programming tool WinFX that supports both XP and Longhorns UI.

    Nothing special.

    -----
    Yep another Free IPods Link [freeipods.com]

  • by linuxislandsucks ( 461335 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @09:59AM (#10096011) Homepage Journal
    hmm Be eningeers did not need several years to come up with a similar filesystem..what is taking MS so long?

  • 2007? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dybdahl ( 80720 )
    So, in real life we'll see it in 2007? Or 2008? I guess we have an issue for a poll here :-)
  • Damnit. (Score:5, Funny)

    by EvilCabbage ( 589836 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:00AM (#10096016) Homepage
    .. and I just used my last "giant system requirement" joke on the Half Life 2 story.
  • by jfengel ( 409917 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:00AM (#10096022) Homepage Journal
    WinFS is an interesting, bold, and novel take on a file system, but I'm not sure why it's taking so long for them to implement. They've been working on it for a very long time. It's complicated, but it doesn't seem ten-years-by-a-dedicated-team complicated. I can't help but think that once Microsoft comes out with a reference model, there will be an open source reimplementation in months.

    Microsoft has higher demands on it, and it's harder to develop it the first time, and presumably their implementation is optimized to within in an inch of its life, but I still don't see why a project they're working on now won't be ready for 2006.

    Could it be that they want to adapt their applications to use the new features before they release it? That I could see taking forever, since everything from Word down to the format Spider Solitaire saves its games in would be affected. But I assume that they've implemented a Win32 filesystem API on top of it, and presumably with tolerable performance, so why not release it and adapt the apps later?
    • by Halcyon-X ( 217968 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:38AM (#10096226)
      WinFS is a way for applications to share data through defacto XML schema. Like the Windows clipboard allows data to be pasted from any application to any other application (in theory), WinFS is supposed to do the same, so any application can request any data through any other application, and it will process it. Sort of like piping in Linux "everything as a file", only they will have hooks for everything not just stdin stdout. I also assume they will tie in NGSCB/Palladium authentication into this. Here [c-sharpcorner.com] is a link explaining this in more detail.

      The goal is to make their hard disk search easier, handling all types of data. Another goal is to be like open source, by giving proprietary software more reason not to re-invent the wheel, because they can access the data through another application. They will use meta data to define everything so any application can use any data.

      The problem is that 3rd parties all have to agree on a standard, and no doubt patents will be involved, licensing, preventing applications from working well with one another to gain an edge, viruses will have a MUCH easier time doing silly things with your data (this could make distributed data mining a reality if a worm spreads enough), who knows if it will work in practice as well as it should in theory.

      This is why WinFS doesn't replace NTFS but cooperates with it, it's a layer of meta data. Needless to say MS have a huge task on their hands.

    • They have been promissing WinFS since NT 4.0 and it ends up being pushed out till the "next release". It was orginally part of Cairo and got dropped and we got the OK but not spectacular NT 4.0.
    • Actually it could eb very likely they want new software to take advantage of WinFS before it's release... I recently saw a clip showing off a in-development media app that MS is working on that requires WinFS (& since both the alpha app and alpha WinFS were used they sure seem to work atm). It was pretty fancy and simplified alot of file management tasks. I'm guessing most of the delay is related to apps like that, so they can actually show some purpose for WinFS...
    • Oh yeah ... Linux will have WinFS before MS does.
    • by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:58AM (#10096327)
      Bugs in the filesystem are not permissible. People are willing to take occasional downtime and the loss of small pieces of data. They won't stand for an entire filesystem getting corrupted. Think back to the early days of open source "alternative filesystems" like ReiserFS, XFS, and JFS. They all had growing pains, and some people (like me) still haven't forgotten them. If MS ship WinFS with major bugs in it, it'll hurt them badly, especially if their new products rely on the presence of WinFS. (People won't stop using Windows, they'll just use NTFS instead.)

      Imagine that the next versions of SQL Server and Exchange both rely on WinFS. If people aren't using WinFS, they won't be using SQL Server and Exchange. That's a big, big problem. I mean, look at the open source world. How many apps are there which really take advantage of all the features present in XFS, JFS, and ReiserFS? Almost none. It's because they have a history of dubious reliability, so people (and hence distros) have been slow to adopt them. That's precisely what MS are afraid of. They can't roll out WinFS until they know it's reliable enough that people won't be afraid to take advantage of its new features.

      And don't forget that this is not an evolution of NTFS or FAT, it's a completely new animal. Not just in the data structures that are stored on the disk, but in the whole concept of what a filesystem is and how it's to be used. The fact that it's all new code makes it hard to debug; the fact that it's a new paradigm (apologies) makes it almost impossible. How can you know the new features are bug-free if there are no programs which use the new features?

      • If MS ship WinFS with major bugs in it, it'll hurt them badly, especially if their new products rely on the presence of WinFS. (People won't stop using Windows, they'll just use NTFS instead.)

        WinFS is NOT a file system. It is a way of describing and sharing meta data so applications can use ANY data format used on the hard drive that is supported by installed applications.

        NTFS is still used, WinFS runs on top, providing the meta data. WinFS has absolutely nothing to do with data being corrupted on the ha

  • by failedlogic ( 627314 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:00AM (#10096023)
    Microsoft, and in particular Bill Gates, have stated numerous times that Longhorn is the most expensive and time intensive project MS has embarked on and would be as complicated as the Apollo space program. With that in mind, WinFS was really the cornerstone and pride of the Longhorn project as MS would like to say it. With that in mind, this is akin to cutting the goals of the Apollo space program drastically ... like not landing on the moon at all!

    Granted a system like WinFS can be extremely complicated but it is not a "selling" point to me for Longhorn. I will compare it against other features it offers and decide to buy it or continue to use XP.
    • Microsoft, and in particular Bill Gates, have stated numerous times that Longhorn is the most expensive and time intensive project MS has embarked on and would be as complicated as the Apollo space program.

      Would you want to fly into space on a shuttle that runs Windows?

      "Uhhh Houston, what the hell is a pagefault in kernel32.386?"
  • by artlu ( 265391 )
    Pretty soon Gates will come out and say that the newly designed Kernel is not going to be complete, and they'll be selling XP Longhorn Edition. This is almost as bad as ID.

    gShares.net [gshares.net]

  • by ThePyro ( 645161 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:00AM (#10096028)
    Eek.... who would want to trust their data to a file system so complex that even Microsoft can't finish it after multiple years of development?
  • vaporware? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mantera ( 685223 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:05AM (#10096050)

    Microsoft has been doing this for too long for my taste now. Promising all remarkable and amazing things that keep us on our toes and when the product hits the shelves it's only ever so slightly different from its predecessor.
  • by rusty0101 ( 565565 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:05AM (#10096055) Homepage Journal
    WinFS is simply the latest itteration of the concept of a database based file system that Microsoft has been touting as the next great thing to be included with Windows, since they started promoting the upcomming Windows 2000. (possibly earlier). The fact that Microsoft has not come up with a workable solution tells me that non-file related features are of greater importance to the marketing people than getting something out the door.
  • by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:08AM (#10096073)
    A feature that solves no problem. An interesting idea placed in the wrong location. And I'm glad its shelved.

    On paper, this sounds neat kind of in a thesis paper sort of way. But the practicality of it was way beyond what any desktop user would need. I had problems figuring out how to use it efficiently (after all you have to have meta data lined up). I couldn't even begin to figure out how to explain how WinFS would help grandma and grandpa.

    I do see WinFS as an interesting tool for server applications but for a desktop it isn't feasible without a whole heck of a lot more tools. On a server I can see this being a powerful tool to help keep your web app file data sane because you can force metadata and relationships there. On a desktop it would have been a feature with cumbersome tools used once a month. This is the very definition of bloat. I am very glad it was shelved since the cost vs benifit of WinFS on the desktop was completely off.
    • I agree with you - definately bloatware. But when has that stopped Microsoft?
    • by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:58AM (#10096331) Homepage
      Well, not exactly. I can see how I'd explain this to my grandmother ("Nana, type 'vacation photos from our trip to Italy'" instead of "Nana, search for files with the name DSCITALY001...") That's the ideal implementation any way.

      I could also see this being a boon for business. Often when I'm on the phone with someone, I like to pull up all of our email coorespondance. They could do a "spokewheel" implementation: each person would be an axle and various spokes would link to business contact info, personal information, photos of them, etc. Think calling a client, having it pop up and asking "Oh, how was your son's birthday last week?" Again, ideal implementation.
  • by Roguelazer ( 606927 ) <Roguelazer AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:10AM (#10096083) Homepage Journal
    Just make a BFS driver. :P
  • Microsoft's marketing department comes crawling back to reality shortly before release.
  • Another article (Score:2, Informative)

    by fishrokka ( 233163 )
    Another article on Longhorn from today's Washington Post:

    New Windows Planned for 2006 [washingtonpost.com]

    featuring the amusing subhead "Microsoft Dumping Features to Meet Deadline"
  • Call me a luddite if you will, but for the life of me, I cannot see the reason for a new filesystem. I'm all for metadata and so forth, but why rip up the tried and tested file and directory structure for this magical, cure all, search based filesystem. Search works well in Google because web pages are connect. My files aren't connected, so I don't think search on my filesystem will ever be half as good as search on the web.

    As far as I can tell, MS (and GNOME 2.6 it would seem), seem to envision a filesystem where every file is simply dumped to one / or c:\ directory and this uber search finds all the files I'll ever need for me? Is this a joke? In this senario, ~50% of all the metadata will be the same for every file. I made it, with my privilages, with my settings etc... . After a while, even the simplest of searches will bring back a dozen matches. I can't see this working.

    The reason given for this is novice users, who don't know where to put their files. they rely on their default program settings and just dump their files anywhere and then complain when they cannot find them. Fair enough, they are novices, but essentially hey are keeping a messy hard disc. WinFS would help these people only in the initial stages. As soon as too many files named 'Picture of Aunt Tilly' are present, the system will fall on its ass.

    Metadata/Search based filesystems are based on the assumption that users do not know where their files are. I do, you do and for those who don't, no amount of programming wizardry is going to help them in the long run. Ultimatly they will have to learn how to organise their files, just like they have to learn to type,use the mouse and browse the web. And in reality, most people do eventually learn how to organise their files, if they use computers enough. And if they don't, our regular searches will be of use to them with only minor improvements. It's tough, but consider the search results that 'Find my Accounts for Acme Corp. for the third quarter of last year' brings up on the shared drive for even a medium sized accounting department after only a year.

    Give me nested directories 30 levels deep!! And no spatial browsing please!
    I did wast an entry in my journal on this stuff. maybe now someone will read it?
    • Because NTFS is fairly slow, clunky and has the rather brain-dead file sharing limitations that every version of Windows has suffered from up until now.

      GJC
    • Metadata/Search based filesystems are based on the assumption that users do not know where their files are.

      Maybe having to know where your files are is a concept that should be discarded. Remember when everything was on the command line and the only way to get anything done was to know all the commands ahead of time? Then the GUI came along, and it became possible to explore programs and figure out how they worked as you went along. Or when you had to know the IRQ or other bits of technical data about a
    • I got 3 pc's now 2 are linux machines so I set them up somewhat transparant. Same home directory. Running apps on the headless one that display on the desktop one. But still it is sometimes hard to find the right one. It is like driving a double clutch car. Not hard or impossible to learn but not exactly without effort either. For one thing by default locate doesn't work accross the network. Since the linux machines are full with HD's I also got some on windows. 3 machines to search for content.

      The dream i

    • Give me nested directories 30 levels deep!! And no spatial browsing please!

      I agree with you that putting everything in the same basket and rely just on metadata to extract info is quite stupid (probably we'll end with a "folder" and "subfolder" metadata anyways, so what's the point?). But relying exclusively on directory trees to classify data has definitively limits, in that a certain file may belong to at most one category (if you are thinking that symlinks and hardlinks solve that problem nicely, pleas

  • ...wich is not a surprise. Making those available in all the relevant windows platforms they'll tempt developers to *use* them (the same binary using avalon features may work without modifications in longhorn *and* XP SP$SOMETHING - compare that to avalon only being available for longhorn. Everyone would use just XP features and no longhorn features because fo the extra work needed). It looks to me like they though that everyone would jumpo to Longhorn because of their coolness, but they realized that they
  • by Anonymous Coward

    You don't seriously think that Microsoft had any intention of shipping WinFS with Longhorn did you? That's one of their standard reasons why you shouldn't switch to an alternative operating system - because [x] fancy feature is coming out Real Soon Now. Once they've held onto you long enough to get over the hype surrounding their competitors, and once the release date looms nearer, they drop the pretense that they are going to ship with the fancy new feature. WinFS is vapourware [wikipedia.org].

    "In other cases, vapo

  • by Anonymous Writer ( 746272 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:49AM (#10096275)

    ... I was actually interested to see what WinFS would be like. From what I understand, it is supposed to be different from the traditional heirarchical filesystem. If the filesystem worked like a database, then folders would be the equivalent of tables and SQL statement results, if it actually used folders.

    I know that Apple's upcoming release of Spotlight [apple.com] with OS X "Tiger" is probably what WinFS would appear to be like from the GUI perspective, but its underlying filesystem is still heirarchical since they're not changing it. I presume it would work similar to the way iTunes displays libraries and playlists like a database, yet stores the actual files in a heirarchical arrangement only visible to a user who manually browses the filesystem. Data displayed from WinFS would be a direct representation, rather than indirect one of data stored heirarchically.

  • Macs and spokewheels (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SilentChris ( 452960 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @10:53AM (#10096293) Homepage
    I think MS is going about this a bit more complicated than necessary. Mac OS 10.4 is said to have similar features. It's not as complicated as you think: simply attach XML metadata to every file (similar to how .NET and a host of other systems do now) and organize based on that.

    The problem with MS's implementation is that they want to tie SQL to it. Noble (it'd vastly improve performance) but unnecessary.

    It still remains to be seen how well Apple pulls this off (my guess: ok, but not perfect). While the implementation is easy, getting it to work as expected will be hard.

    I'd personally be satisfied with just a "spokewheel" system: have every person and event as the axle of a spokewheel and have the files branching off it (business contacts, vacation photos, etc). Not too complicated: just define a person schema in XML, make each person the top key and work off that. I think MS originally wanted to take that approach (based on the MS research projects) but overdeveloped its complexity.
  • by jdkane ( 588293 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @11:00AM (#10096340)
    The FS Article [c-sharpcorner.com] says: "Featuring various new concepts WinFS new data model is capable of storing non-file-data information, which is one of its most remarkable premises. "

    Isn't all information potential file data? Is Microsoft really doing something different than has been done before?

    The article also states "WinFS uses a direct acyclic graph of items (DAG)."

    The math goes back to the 1970's, as referenced by MathWorld [wolfram.com] Old math can be used in new ways. Is his a new way when it's used in the FS that Microsoft is attempting?

    The articles also says: " the WinFS data model provides the following concepts to describe data structures and organizations: * Types and subtypes. * Properties and fields. * Relationships. * Constraints. * Extensibility. "

    Does the new Reiser4 file system [namesys.com] support any of these concepts? -- Is WinFS really as new and exciting as the marketing and media says it is?

    Thanks.

    • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @01:35PM (#10097434) Journal
      Isn't all information potential file data? Is Microsoft really doing something different than has been done before?

      Not really, WinFS is a service that runs in the background to help in categorizing and searching for files that are stored in the good ol' NTFS file system. WinFS internally uses NTFS streams to store metadata. NTFS streams are already present and fully supported in both Windows 2000 and XP already, but not that widely used by these operating systems.

      You can make some basic use of streams by right clicking on a file in Windows XP, selecting Properties, and then selecting the Summary tab. The information you type in there is associated with the file as streams. There's a program at Sysinternals.com to display and set any streams for any file.

      Similarly, NTFS supports hard links, junctions (to mount drives as folders), sparse files and more "cool" stuff that the OS doesn't have graphical interfaces for. A bit funny. :-P
    • by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @06:47PM (#10099452)
      Does the new Reiser4 file system support any of these concepts? -- Is WinFS really as new and exciting as the marketing and media says it is?

      ReiserFS and WinFS are two competing philosophies.

      WinFS is a data store. It's a separate, monolithic database which stores meta-information about files on the traditional filing system.

      ReiserFS is about extending existing filing system technology such that data becomes transparent and self describing allowing any kind of querying facility to be layered on top.

      Let me try an explain. Let's say you have a hard disk of OpenOffice Writer documents, which you wish to query. This is hard, because the SXW format is a complex beast. To the operating system it's an opaque series of bytes. Let's see how you'd query photos embedded in these documents:

      Firstly you need to locate and open the file using the POSIX fs apis. Next, use a zip library to navigate the compressed filing-system-within-a-file that zip files are, to locate one of the XML files contained within. Now load up an XML parser and navigate the XML to one of the image nodes. Unfortunately not all information is easily represented using XML: this is one such piece, so it's actually stored as a JPEG encoded binary file ... decode that, and now navigate the structures in memory to arrive at the data you want.

      Word documents are not much better.

      This is an extreme example, but hopefully you see my point. Look at how many APIs were required to get to the wanted information, yet they are all fundamentally the same. ZIP files are miniature filing systems which add a compression feature (and performance!). XML is a tree of nodes: hmm, kind of like a filing system. Binary structures in memory tend to be trees or graphs of information: a bit like a filing system that supports linking.

      What if we could unify these APIs? What if the underlying operating systems filing system was powerful enough to be the superset of all the features these disparate APIs provided? ZIP files are used for compression, for fast access to the contents and because it makes it easy to send them via the internet and manipulate them with modern file managers. XML is used because it's an efficient way to represent a complex tree with many nodes. Binary structures are used because some stuff just can't be easily encoded as text.

      But we have a problem - there are sound technical reasons why openoffice documents are not a sparse collection of files. For one, most filing systems are not fast enough: a file is an expensive thing, opening and reading them even moreso. You don't want a file for every cell in a spreadsheet, or every paragraph in a word processor document. The overhead is too high. There is another problem: files cannot be directories and vice-versa. Having each paragraph as a file may be convenient for search engines but it's not so convenient for users.

      What if files could simultaneously be directories, and what if we used a filing system designed so that a 3 byte file is not an unacceptably inefficient design? What if we could decompose our elaborate file formats with our chunks and headers and streams and DIRENTs into a tree of files all accessed via the POSIX APIs: open(), read(), close() ?

      No longer would the structure of an image embedded in a word processor document be a mysterious and opaque bytestream to other programs. Now it's trivial to trawl the content of files and index them.

      You see, this is the genius of Hans Reiser. He realised that writing indexer plugins for every file format under the sun would never work, it'd never scale, it'd never give users consistently good results. The right way is to make the foundations powerful enough that the concept of file formats itself falls away: by minimizing primitives, by unifiying interfaces, the system becomes more powerful.

      The technical challenges of such an approach are enormous, it can only be done because ReiserFS is not a "bet the company" move, as

  • big problems (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @11:30AM (#10096505) Homepage Journal
    This vaporware evaporation is a good example of how Microsoft inhibits innovation. Not due to some malicious plot by Bill Gates. Rather the inability of his giant, complicated organization to nimbly publish new technologies, because of the ramifications of any change to their monolithic system. If their architecture were simpler or more elegant, they could point their billions of dollars and thousands of programmers at any new tech, armed with the inside expertise of the other Windows systems with which it must interoperate, and roll out something new in a few months. WinFS has been announced so many times, and would do so much good for Microsoft, that it's obvious Microsoft's execs want to put it out. The captain of the Titanic wanted to turn away from the iceberg, too, but his ponderous state-of-the-art craft couldn't avoid the sudden obstacle. Let's just hope there are enough lifeboats to save the hundreds of millions of Windows users, and the rest of us don't get sucked down in the whirlpool.

    "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by incompetence."
    - Unix fortune teller
  • by bushidocoder ( 550265 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @12:14PM (#10096840) Homepage
    I think what we're seeing is MS beginning to adapt to the release schedules of their OSS competitors.

    If you think of new paid MS desktop releases as whole number releases of Gnome/KDE (substantial changes, new environment), MS is in pickle trying to compete with the "minor" even numbered releases the Linux desktop teams are pushing out. Every six months, Gnome users get a little more - that's hard to fight when you only release new OS changes every 4 years.

    Whenever people asked me why they should upgrade from Win2k to WinXP Pro, I always said "You'll get a new annoying cartoon interface and a couple nice internal things, but mainly, you go with XP because of the periodic updates that become available to it". I think if you look at XP that was released and compare that to the XP users have now (with journal tablet support, two new versions of the windows media framework, three revisions of built in wireless support, and now native bluetooth support all the other stuff tossed into SP2), I think that everyone has to agree (whether they like XP or not is a different story) that its a substantially changed product. This is ignoring the products that were pushed to all previous versions of windows (.NET Framework, IE and OE, DirectX 9, etc). Its also not just cosmetic features - The windows userland driver model is being deployed mid-XP release as opposed to in a new Windows version.

    From the look of it, the changes keep coming - by the time Longhorn rolls out, XP users will also have the same major version of .NET 2.0 Longhorn will have a two years beforehand, Indigo a year in advance, the free Yukon embeddable data engine two years beforehand and now a substantial slice of Avalon, not to mention at least 1 more media framework and substantially increased device support - XP is a completely different beast. Hopefully we'll get a new version of IE that isn't the equivelant of shoving a rod of Uranium 235 down your shorts too (and for those who don't think its important when you're using Firefox anyway... have you looked at how many apps mshtml.dll is embedded in?).

    It looks like WinFS follows the same strategy - don't buy Longhorn because its completely different from XP - buy it because its slightly different than XP at release, but also because you'll be eligible for a four years update cycle that will end with Longhorn being substantially different than XP's resting place.
    • Very interesting analysis. From what you're projecting, it's not too far a leap to a subscription based model, which is where MS has wanted to head all along. (Remember the hue and cry when they announced moves in this direction before?)

      It's also somewhat similar to the way Apple rolls out OS X updates. (That has also caused consternation among a small vocal minority of OS X users that don't want to pay for upgrades but don't want to be "left behind".)

      Red Hat, Sun, Covalent, and others are embracing subsc [itmanagersjournal.com]
  • by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Saturday August 28, 2004 @01:25PM (#10097352) Journal
    Here's a slighly more detailed list of changed plans:

    - No WinFS
    - WinFX, the new API to replace Win32 will also be released for Windows 2000 and XP.
    - Indigo [microsoft.com], the new communications infrastructure for Longhorn will be released for Windows 2000 and XP.
    - Avalon [microsoft.com], the presentational subsystem in Longhorn will be released for Windows 2000 and XP.

    So, in essence, it seems like the difference will be as great as that between Windows 2000 and XP -- a bit of polish and a new interface, maybe semi-3D this time. And that's when Microsoft is working hard? I have no idea why I should check out Longhorn as Windows XP will be far more mature at the time (and maturity plays a huge role in Microsoft's products), and Longhorn seemingly won't even bring any major new features. :-S

    I have no idea why they're backporting a lot of key features to XP and 2000 either. I would understand it better if they developed under an open source model, but this company should want profit from selling licenses! Huh?

    By the way, WinFS was never a file system, it's supposed to be an extension to NTFS. So one of the links that say "more than a file system" is horribly incorrect.

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