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WinFS Beta 1 Released Early
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Aug 29, 2005 07:44 PM
from the how-early-is-too-early dept.
from the how-early-is-too-early dept.
Mouldy Punk writes "Infoworld is reporting that WinFS Beta 1 has been released. The new relational file system for Windows is posted on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. This release is designed to offer developers a preview of WinFS capabilities. WinFS will be in beta when Windows Vista ships and will RTM afterwords. WinFS, when it ships, will be available for download for Windows Vista and possible support for Windows XP is being considered. The distribution mechanism for WinFS will be through an add-on download much like the .NET framework is today. Tom Rizzo also notes that there is a new blog dedicated to Win FS."
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I wanna know (Score:5, Funny)
Why is this modded funny? (Score:5, Informative)
I for one would like to know what Hans has to say on this fs.
Parent
Is Linux Trailing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Reiser4 is technologically ahead of WinFS as a high performance storage layer, see www.namesys.com [namesys.com] for details on its design. When you do this layering the way they did it, with the metadata stored in a layer above the FS rather than integrated into it, you lose a lot of performance while gain the advantage of successfully avoiding dealing with a host of technical issues. We are at least 5 years ahead of them technically in the storage layer.
That said, semantic enhancements matter more than performance, and it is better to do something semantically than to do nothing, and what Linux currently is doing is nothing.
The political support for adding semantic enhancements to Linux namespaces is mixed at best. I worry we will see that death by committee rules, and there will be no belief that each FS should try to innovate in its own way and compete with the others until one is proven the right solution. We are in serious danger of having MS implement bad technology, and Linux having to devote large amounts of resources to copying it in 5 years because we were late and chose to trail rather than lead. If the filesystems were free to compete in semantics, we could have one or several of the Linux filesystems leading them instead.
SQL and the relational model is fundamentally the wrong model for semi-structured data. See www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html [namesys.com] for why.
Technically, I would worry much more about Apple. Dominic Giampaolo is very bright, and well funded. His chances of delivering on a good set of semantics are high because he and Jobs are very sharp, and neither of them is afraid to go where no one has gone before. Our chances of losing technically to Giampaolo and Jobs are high, because we are frankly not well funded, and a lot of us are complacent with semantics that are still pretty much the same as their father's Unix box.
So, in summary, I would say that we are still ahead but losing speed fast.
Thanks for your kind words Hisham.
Parent
Re:Is Linux Trailing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been watching the fun you've had on lkml and wanted to say don't give up! The work you and your team are doing is wondeful.
If anything, I think you should stop focussing on getting Reiser4 into the kernel and instead start demonstrating the applications of your ideas on semantics. In other words - put what you've built to work outside the kernel and prove to people that they cannot live without a next-generation filing system. It may even mean doing things you have never done before, like creating a new distro derivative.
I know how emotionally draining free software politics can be, we get a lot of that in my own autopackage project. If it gets too much rather than risk burn out, go off and do your own thing for a while. If you really do have a better way people will join your banner ;)
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Re:And ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone will probably have at least partial support for it before it ever even gets out of beta.
And then it will stay only partially supported for 10+ years, just like the NTFS support.
Parent
Vista==XP (Score:5, Funny)
but what about the interface to it? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "DB based FS" is only as good as the data that you put in, unless you solely want to make virtual folders of "all my MP3s that I warez'd last week from Rancid", but I'd say those sorts of things are going to be in the minority.. and again, depend on the metadata of said pirate MP3s.
Now there will be code jocks out there who would LOVE this sort of thing, since you could probably use it as a halfway decent free CVS replacement, but I'm thinking more of Joe and Jane Sixpack. How is it going to make their AOL experience better?
Ever been to Cairo? (Score:5, Informative)
In 2003? Jesus Christ!
I seem to remember that in 1994, Cairo [wikipedia.org] was all the rage. Hell, it has been an idea since 1991. If I did not toss them out before I moved into my current house, I'd have scans of each individual article in Windows Magazine about Cairo from 1994, 1995, and 1997.
WinFS is not even close to being called "new."
WinFS Is *Not* A Filesystem (Score:5, Informative)
WinFS is not a separate filesystem. It uses NTFS as the filesystem, but then stores metadata on top of that (the same way other filesystems like HFS+ have for years).
You don't need to reform to WinFS, it's not a filesystem, but a relational database that carries metadata about existing files on an NTFS partition.
Parent
Re:Too complicated....... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, of course, things went pretty smoothly. Users were able to easily convert their partitions to NTFS when upgrading (even if they didn't know what a partition was). New PCs came with NTFS by default, and Windows XP+NTFS succeeded largely (unless you're a Linux fanboy and don't want to admit it; in that case it never happened, how could it?). The (Windows) world was a better place now that FAT32 was largely a thing of the past. I'm not so sure if WinFS will be all that great, but we'll see.
Windows Vista will be no different than the 98 to XP conversion. NTFS users will be able to easily convert their partitions. Again, they will be able to do it even if they don't know what it is exactly. As long as they know it's recommended, they will keep clicking the Next button. You're worrying about something that will clearly never happen, given Microsoft's track record.
The add-on will likely be via Windows Update and extremely simple to apply. People who buy PCs after the add-on is released won't even have to do that. They will just have WinFS.
I also want to touch upon the phrase "idiot windows users" that you used. Saying something like that only serves to make you sound like an idiot. Windows users are largely novices, but you can't expect everyone to be an expert user able to keep up with the quirks of Linux et al. Calling Windows users idiots is like calling people who drive car's with automatic transmissions idiots. Sure, automatics are easier to learn to use, but that doesn't make those drivers idiots.
Now, I could go on to write a whole article bashing Geek Squad, but that would be pointless since we all know they suck and they overcharge.
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Informative)
for more information.
Basically, it sounds like the files are stored at the low level as ntfs files, with a relational database wrapping around them, allowing you to treat them as
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Informative)
It's more than a file indexer for a developer, but just that for the enduser. Right now, it seems Microsoft really just wants feedback on the API's. If any real innovation for endusers is going to come from this, Microsoft seems to hope developers will figure it out.
ext3 was essentially an add-on for ext2. Point being, some of the better improvements don't take reinventing everything.
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Funny)
One of these days they're going to invent an operating system that recognises the Backspace button. The possibilities will be endless! They might even have cars that run on electricity in that future age.
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Insightful)
With folders going the way of the highway, you can just heap whatever files you want, wherever you want, without all of that path confusion. Deal with namespace collisions either with longer, more descriptive file names, unique file identifiers, or a mixture of the two.
You might find it idiotic, but I find it as the best way to organize my files and find what I want, as fast as possible. Pair it with a program that can rip my files apart for all of the metadata that it can give up, index that along side the files, and no file is ever more than a few mouseclicks away. Best yet, instead of having to delete and move files around, which thrashes the disk and makes the filesystem a disaster, the filesystem can effeciently use space because it can know exactly how big the files are, and start sticking files right up next to each other. And if I were designing the UI for this thing, you'd be able to change over to a pane, change the SQL query, and poof, the folder displays what you want.
No more rediculous symlinks. No more folder paths, executable paths, etc. Better isolation of executable files and libraries and configurations, verses userspace files. Honestly, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages IMO.
Parent
Sounds like an AS/400 to me (Score:5, Interesting)
Your description sounds an awful lot like what the AS400 team used to describe when I worked at companies that had good AS400 techies. It hybridized the mainframe-style contiguous file allocations with an integrated RDBMS that tracked the file information, much as the file information pages do with other file systems.
I find it interesting that so many "advances" other systems are making nowadays sound exactly like what the AS400 developers used to talk about. Using databases to store configuration information. Making the database an integral part of the OS. Virtualizing all storage so the system could shuffle files based on size changes and usage patterns to minimize head thrashing. Using wizards/forms for adding new software, changing configurations, etc.
I guess it's all considered "new" because so few people ever actually learned anything about the AS400 internals -- they just used them and counted on the system to do it's job properly.
Parent
So then what is Delete (Score:5, Interesting)
What then is delete? How does a user distinguish between "remove an association from the blob of data" vs "remove this blob of data altogether". Should the blob automatically delete when you remove all metadata around it? If not, how will you find it again? If so, would you really want data vanishing just because you removed a keyword?
What does partial backup look like on a system? How can you have a combination of partial backups and know you have a whole? I can do that with a set of five directories. Let's say you tag a set of files with "project fred". But one small file, that you almost never care about, gets tagged with "project ferd". What good is the ol' Fred backup now?
At some core level these blobs of data that users place on a system need ONE meaningful location where they always "are". You need someplace where the file will always be, no matter what other associations you remove. You need somewhere you know it will be to assure yourself EVERYTHING you care about is backed up or moved between systems.
The perfection you seek can just as easily be obtained with files in directories that allow metadata on top of them and things like smart folders that are essentially queries over the user-defined and automatically extracted metadata. In fact I think that's what WinFS does anyway (just like OS X does today).
If you really like the system you describe nothing is stopping you from storing all your files in a DB and writing an explorer on top of that. Yet all this time, things like that have never taken off in the market.
Some things do not take off because the technology to make the useful has not yet arrived. But some things simply never take off because in practice they are not practical, and the filesystem as a full-fledged database with no default structure is one of those things.
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Funny)
Damn, you mean I can't do something like this
ln -s ridiculous rediculous
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean the ^H's? He's probably using Lunix. It's 2005 and they still can't get the freaking backspace key to work.
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Insightful)
That attitude (of the most people you are talking about) to me is just like, for instance: ``I don't want to learn about strings and notes, I just want to play the guitar!''
People will have to get it into their heads that computers are complicated things and you need some basic understanding of how they work before being able to use them. Have you ever seen a `My Documents' folder of someone who doesn't want to know about computers? No wonder they're always complaining that `it doesn't work.'
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I have seen the "My Documents" folder of my mother's account. And as you say she has like 500 documents, including MS Explorer saved files AND their corresponding folders to hold images and misc binary files.
Yes I know that for me it is really stupid, as I tend to order every thing on its subfolder. For example let me tell you how I order my music:
blah blah, you get the idea.
And, althoug I have heard the marvelous things that programs as iTunes, Win.Media Player, Winamp Media Library or even MusicMatch jukebox do to order music libraries I still cant get one that I find really useful.
Maybe for a lot of us that is THE way to do it, but see, my mother, as a lot of computer users is just a Biology teacher. She knows the minimum required to do what she NEEDS to do in her computer (Word, Excel, Power Point) you just need to understand that people does not have the model in their heads, I mean, the model of the file system, that you/we automatically recall when we open the Windows Explorer/Knoqueror/etc...
That attitude (of the most people you are talking about) to me is just like, for instance: ``I don't want to learn about strings and notes, I just want to play the guitar!''
Now, as an example, Think about the WinFS like Gmail, I really found the Gmail approach useful, more if I have thousands of mail. If you see, desktop search bars have gained a lot of acceptance these days.
That is because we no longer know what each file in our computer does, and we do not have to care. We need to get exactly the file that we need when we need it, and you can do that searching.
Now before ranting about the facts I gave, just take my last paragraph and replace the word file with mail and instead of a Microsoft technology you will have a Google technology, is it bad? no, I really dont care where all my files go, if I need to have some files classified then a Tag would be great. otherwise I just want the OS to identify it when I ask for it.
Parent
Re:Give it a rest, OK? (Score:5, Funny)
Locking out Linux/Samba clients and servers?
Parent
Re:Is this really a file system? (Score:5, Informative)
Trivia bit: Before NT4, you couldn't install NT on an NTFS partition. FAT was the only way to go. The install WOULD immediately convert the partition to NTFS on first boot, but it wouldn't actually install as NTFS.
Parent
Re:Not to sound too offtopic, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's somewhat telling that you were pleased that it ran just as fast as XP on the same system. On my Linux box, when I upgrade the kernel or even KDE, I generally expect better performance than before. I get the impression that OSX users expect the same.
Parent
Re:bleh (Score:5, Funny)
Works for Google.
Parent