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WinFS Gets the Axe
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Sat Jun 24, 2006 06:34 PM
from the shell-games dept.
from the shell-games dept.
commander salamander writes "Over at the WinFS Team Blog, Quentin Clark states that Microsoft no longer plans to ship WinFS as a standalone software component. Instead, portions of the underlying technology will be included with the next release of SQL Server (codename Katmai) and ADO.NET. Does this spell the end for the true relational storage paradigm that Microsoft has been promising since Windows 95?"
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WinFS' Demise Not a Bang Or a Whimper 264 comments
Shadowruni writes "The Seattle-PI confirms with Mircosoft what MS bloggers and pundits have been saying all along. WinFS simply isn't going to happen. Some of its features have been 'merged' with other projects." From the article: "WinFS was dropped from Vista in what company executives described at the time as a trade-off to get the operating system completed in a timely manner. The release of Vista has since been delayed again and is now scheduled for November for large customers and January 2007 for the general public, though some observers say it may be out even later." Final confirmation of a story from last month.
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WinFS Gets the Axe
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an amazing promise (Score:5, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Wednesday August 15, @03:36PM)
How long has the promise of WinFS been on the table? Microsoft has dragged this teaser on 10-lb test in front of drooling long-time loyalists as the newest and amazingly innovative piece of their "best OS ever". Aside from the fact it really wasn't amazingly innovative (well, in vernacular maybe it was), now they're close to closing the door on this. I wonder how many sales they've pulled off with these lies?
HINT: Here's a snippet from an October 2003 PC World article [pcworld.com]:
Microsoft may not have thought they were lying at the time but they must have had an idea they not only weren't on target but they weren't even close! It's amazing a company can get away with this -- call it genius marketing, I call it deception at all costs to keep their customer base intact.
Sometimes these outcomes seem to say more about the Microsoft loyalists than Microsoft.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know, but if this has been circulating at least since NT4 days and Duke Nukem Forever comes out first - which might actually freaking happen, that tells you something.
And I don't think that something has anything to do with MS being an agile.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.iatse129.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday April 18 2007, @09:41PM)
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft will always do this, just like Vienna (Fiji, whatever) is supposed to be a complete re-write, bullshit. They'll probably just add some crappy RAM and CPU hogging features and call it inovative.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't forget the DRM, or the dollars added to the price.
Rehash of XP (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday December 04 2005, @12:42PM)
Unless you count the new start menu
How is this fundamental? Stardock's WindowBlinds has been offering the ability to create a custom start-menu for years.
the "everybody's a user" security model,
Microsoft had the ability to implement this in Windows XP. They've supported Limited User Accounts since Windows 2000. Its a change in default user settings, not an earthshaking new security model.
the sidebar
Does Google Desktop [google.com] ring a bell? How about ObjectDock? [stardock.com]
the bundle of included apps
Oh, you mean new skins for Minesweeper, Wordpad, and Solitaire? Or do you mean 3-d chess? Last I heard they weren't even including a basic office suite. For a 7-gig disc, I expect more.
Face it, Vista includes little that's especially new, even for Microsoft.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:4, Funny)
Who do you think is paying him?
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Insightful)
Where's the "and then some" part? All the new bundled apps in Vista are direct clones of OS X apps, even down to the exact same interface in iCal. Even Vista's filesystem layout is a clone of OS X's, down to the same folder names in the same locations!
If I see one more Microsoft fanboy say Vista is the "biggest change since Windows 3.1 to Windows 95," I'm going to scream, because you're just quoting goofy marketing brochures. The transition to Vista is more like going from 95 to 98. Vista is the same old Windows code with an updated shell and some new APIs and minor features. It's not some huge, revolutionary change. You've been listening to hype for six years and have built Longhorn up in your mind.
No, Microsoft had to start over in 2004 with the "Longhorn reset." Even if they hadn't, where are you getting 6 years? 6 years ago, they were just getting Windows 2000 out the door.
It's not being "blinded by hatred." Even Microsoft's own employees refer to Vista as "broken." It's a massively huge codebase with tons of dependencies and crufty code dating back decades. The new features aren't that new. Vista is a minor accomplishment that will barely get Windows to the point where OS X was in April of 2005, and in many cases, where OS X was in 2001. Watching thumbnail full-motion-video in the taskbar? Please! I was doing that in the 2000 OS X Public Beta.
But hey, if you think translucent windows are some revolutionary OS change, have at it. I, however, predict a flop nearing the level of Windows ME.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.apoc.org/ | Last Journal: Thursday April 21 2005, @12:19PM)
Now, as a slashdotter, that makes me the standard linux fanboy - but wait - my mom had the chance to take an internet course at work, and she chose an intro to linux - why? Because she's sick of how much a pain it is to make MS work. She's sick of dealing with AV and spyware suites. She doesn't understand why she has to reboot after installing digital camera software, and she wants to know why it seems so trouble free and fast when she uses my systems.
When I tell her it's free and available for everyone to work on/dig into/modify, she's amazed. There are at least a few end-users in the world who really are getting tired of the standard MS way of doing business, and who don't care. Hell, my mom doesn't understand why my grandparents went with XP, when Win2k seems to do 95% of the same stuff. She actually complained that their new Dell seems slower and less useful than her Win2k system.
The problem is is that I don't know how many disillusioned people it will take to make a significant enough shift that the major players (MS, Dell) sit up and take notice. But whatever....I have linux and tequilla, so all is well....
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ev4.org/)
Consider:
New hardware will start coming out with drivers only for the newest versions of windows.
If you buy a complete new system, it's likely to have the latest version and may not be compatible with previous versions at all.
New apps will come out which are vista-only, and usually not because they actually require any of the new features.
Patches and updates for the old versions will slow to a crawl.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Interesting)
For example?
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh and self-healing and diagnostics? Other operating systems don't have them because by and large, they don't need them. The registry on my PC at work gets corrupted once a year. I've never had a major component of OS X or Linux get so corrupted that I have to reinstall the OS or toss out the PC.
Vista has some big changes on the UI layer. It looks a lot more like OS X. And there are some changes under the hood. But there's nothing earth shattering here. It's more like Apple's 10.2 vs 10.3 or RedHat 8 vs RedHat 9. But 10.2 to 10.3 took 18 mmonths, whereas Vista has taken 5 years. Even the search capabilities underwhelm me, as I've grown accustomed to them using Google Desktop or Spotlight.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://wire-head.org/)
Six years ago, MS said they would start paying more attention to security. Everything points to them doing business as usual, and changing nothing. They've made patches to critical vulnerability even more of a problem with their outright refusal to release patches out of their once a month cycle.
MS *is* using their old code base. They started out with the WinXP code base, and that didn't work. So they scrapped the entire Longhorn project, and started over again. This time they used the Win2003 code base. Vista is still using all the legacy code that's included in Win2003, which is nearly the same as WinXP, which is nearly the same as Win2000.
Many people that are bashing Vista *have* tried it. The UI is an outright nightmare to do productive work on. The requirements are far too high for the base OS. Aero will allow even more exploit of users by malware, thanks to the nearly useless sidebar. Of the two serious improvements that MS has managed to actually deliver, LUA is looking to be trash, though the additional group policies are very nice. If the world is very fortunate, they will manage to fix LUA before release.
Also, NFS support in Vista is only in Enterprise and Ultimate, which most people will not have. SMB and NFS both work on OSX, and that platform supports more networking than Vista will. The same is true of BSD and Linux. Vista just supports more MS proprietary network protocols and features. Many of those are supported under BSD/Linux/OSX by installing the right software.
Aero *does not* have a negligible impact, either. You must just have a fairly high end machine, is all. Load that machine down, then compare with Aero and without. You'll see a big performance boost without it.
All of that self diagnostic/self optimazation/self healing stuff that you mention is available under other platforms. A lot of that is even available under WinXP or 2003. You mention that it isn't available from a single source, but it *is* available. Having it in Windows by default seems nice, but it already gets in the way on WinXP. Try deleted a "critical system file" like Outlook Express under XP. There's part of your "self-healing" right there.
I think you having been around long enough, or don't have a good enough memory, to remember the previous big Windows releases. Win3.1 to Win95 was the biggest thing ever, as was 98, ME, XP, etc. MS says this every single time. 3.1 to 95 really was a big change. 9x to XP was arguable even bigger, since it was a switch to a real kernel, and actual protection. XP to Vista is yet more new APIs, a whole mess more annoying UI toys, some management improvements, a *LOT* of DRM, some poorly implemented security improvements, and some well implemented security improvements. However, like all new MS operating systems, the only reason that people will "upgrade" to it will be that it is the only choice on a new PC. Businesses will still be running Win2000 and 2000/2003 Server.
People that have had to deal with MS for the last 15 years know full well that they lie about the product all the way up to release, then the release is broken and missing half of the promised features, and after a service pack or two, it's usable. They also never get anything right the first two times. After that, they feature bloat the product until it's unusable.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://wire-head.org/)
As far as NFS/SMB on OSX, as another poster pointed out, the NFS troubles are generally either a config change requirement on the remote side, or a procedure problem on the local side. They both result from the same issue of unpriviledges ports. SMB still is working fine; you do sometimes see problems with 2003 domains, due to changes on Microsoft's part. Samba had the same problems, especially when 2003 SP1 came out. There is an easy fix on the MS side to resolve this, or you can manually upgrade Samba on OSX, or patch the system.
The performance with Aero was as bad as I think. The system gets noticably slower on my Athlon64 3000+ with a GeForce 6600GT and 1GB RAM with Aero on vs. Aero off. It's also harder to get any work done with that UI in the way. I generally have 20-30 things running on my machine. Under WinXP, this is not a problem, but under Vista it is slower... under Vista w/ Aero, it is enough slower to actually bother me.
I don't see how I was illustrating anything by complaining about WinXP's "self-healing" annoyance. It doesn't work well there, and it doesn't work well on Vista. It still gets in the way, does things that I don't want, and generally makes the platform more annoying. It's a hack to try to work around a deficiency in the platform, rather than fixing the problem. The "self-optimization" is nice, in theory, except it's not really doing much useful, other than wasting electricity.
You brought up even more useless cruft, too. The speech recognition is a waste. People don't want to talk to their computer. This stuff has been around for decades, and it's annoying. The only way to be sure that the computer responds only to voice commands directed at it, is to be sitting at the computer already. This negates the purpose of voice command. Direct speech to text also is more annoying and typing. Many people type faster than they can clearly speak to a computer. It's horrid to have to go back and fix things because the computer doesn't understand context. Spell checks won't save you there. It won't be used.
The new driver model is already proving to be a problem. It's the third driver model in the NT line, and the fifth if you count releases since 3.0. It introduces piles of DRM, and the signed driver requirement. It will let you do *less* with your computer. Goodbye to things like Daemon Tools, the KX audio driver platform, legacy hardware support, etc.
The new security model has been covered ad nauseum. It would've been a nice way to fix the problems that MS created. As it stands now, it's useless. It is too intrusive, and there isn't good ways to work around all the flaws that it creates for legacy apps. You end up having to do the same annoying hacks as you do under 2000 and XP. This is because LUA is still broken, it's just less broken than under 2k/XP.
Performance reporting is not important. Users will never touch this. Most admins will never touch this. Some devs will make use of it, but they largely already have an app suite to do the same thing. It's cute, but that is all.
I know full well what Media Center is. Most people still don't use it. It's more cumbersome than just clicking My Documents. It's very pretty, though, and would be very nice if you weren't already right there at the computer, with a keyboard and mouse. It's nice that *you* use it, but in the many dozens of support calls that I've done to people's houses, not one even
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.ev4.org/)
It's bad enough that you can't uninstall bundled crap like outlook express, media player and internet explorer, but when you try to delete them by hand they get copied right back!
Not to mention the amount of malware that registers itself with the self-healing system, so windows considers the malware to be critical files and copies it back when you delete it.
I remember when 2000 came out touting this feature, and sun did a comparison with solaris...
the windows idea was to let you break things, and then try to fix them, ofcourse this only works to a limited degree, because you can still break something critical to the self-healing process itself.
The solaris approach, was to make you an unprivileged user so you CANT break things.
Just forcing users to run without admin privileges would cut out a majority of instances where an end user breaks something.
And the self healing is pretty much useless anyway, it's great at preventing you from removing malware or unnecessary junk like media player, but it won't stop you trashing the bootloader or deleting the kernel.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://dominionrd.blogspot.com/)
The longhorn reset simply means they tossed away all their changes they had been doing based on the XP codebase, and restarted on the 2003 codebase. It doesn't mean they started from scratch, it means they restarted the project - one of the reasons that Vista has been so delayed.
I am not sure if you have used OS X much of late (I'm typing this on my Mini) but there's a huge amount of stuff in OS X that doesn't exist in XP - spotlight searching, the iLife apps - iPhoto in particular, expose, built in RSS reader, local user security. Vista gets a few of these - the searching, the local user security stuff and I guess you equate media center with iPhoto. I can't really comment on that.
I can't see how you can claim that Aero has a negligible impact on performace. My XP laptop is capable of running Vista, but is a country mile off being able to run Aero. It's a 1 year old laptop, 1GB RAM, Centrino, 32MB of video memory.
The bottom line for you is that you've clearly bought in to the Vista hype. There's a big, wide world out there that Microsoft didn't produce. You should try it some time.
Re:Rehash of XP (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm well aware that that's what you and the other poster were talking about, but I don't care. Talking about which version of Windows is better is like trying to compare the taste of dog shit and vomit when you could be talking about a big juicy steak instead. It's just stupid.
No there aren't. There are six versions of one operating system, and they all share most of the same files. The only difference between the different versions of Vista are what user applications are available and what the default settings are.
In other words, put one of those operating systems on a 566 MB volume, and then maybe I'll start believing that you could be something other than a dirty shill.
OS X doesn't need a reporting tool because everything works right to begin with! It's frankly amazing how Microsoft has managed to train all you people to accept mediocrity to the point where you actually praise the dirty-hack workaround instead of being pissed off that the actual problem wasn't fixed!
Oh, and by the way, FileVault (OS X's equivalent to BitLocker) does have a GUI; it's in the "Security" pane of System Preferences. Also, it's superior to BitLocker because it doesn't rely on the stupid TPM, which means that you can still recover it if the computer dies. Better hope you've got a backup, buddy, because if you use BitLocker and your TPM breaks, you're screwed.
Maybe so, but there's absoutely no evidence of it available to an outside observer like me. Since I'm not one to act on blind faith, I'll continue to assume in this absence of evidence that Microsoft has in fact not changed.
Ah yes, the old false dichotomy: the competition isn't absolutely perfect, so you might as well use Windows! Well, here's a revelation for you: the competition doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it's better. And it is better.Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Insightful)
- The new start menu is not an enhancement, just more functionality glummed into an 11-year old UI device stretched way beyond breaking-point.
- Sleep mode is something Windows should have had half a decade or more ago, it's practically a goddamn necessity with a portable.
- "Everybody's a user" security - a huge flaw with Windows that is finally seeing some action, unfortunately looks like there's plenty of tuning to be done before it actually works.
- The sidebar - seriously, you're excited about a technology you can already have (Dashboard, Konfabulator etc.) and implemented in a boring, unimaginative and sceen-hogging way?
- Print system - I'm not qualified to comment
- Bindle of included apps - such as...
- WiFi networking which remembers the settings of each wifi network you connect to - um... come on, 6 years wait for THIS?
- "Performance Statistcits" - god, go download one of the dozens of benchmarking apps... why does this make you want to buy Vista at all?
- 64-bit support - seriously, it needs this to even be in the game, it's not some special feature to trumpet above any other OS, it's an absolutely basic necessity.
The only thing you mention which IS slightly exciting to those watching Vista is the new compositing system, Aero. Which will allow some nice effects and finally decent non-flickery, back-buffered drawing to sceen.
Talk about scraping the barrel, these things that you seem so excited about - they're nothing but the absolute basic necessity to even have the OS worth considering in 2007 when it may be released. Where are the things that make you really excited about the OS, the things that make it special? The things that elevate the experience of using the OS rather than a tick-box driven nightmare of minimum-level-of-attention-to-detail copy-cat features.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://www.ictsc.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday December 09 2006, @10:15PM)
Even Aero isn't innovative, I've been playing with Sun Microsystem's Project Looking glass and whilst it doesn't do a lot for me (it makes my laptop an interesting talking point when giving presentations....) and it feels like something dumped on top of the OS to make it look like a major change.
I cannot see corporate users migrating to Vista for any real reason, even the "new" security model isn't going to be a winner there as it will break any application that through lack of proper design requires admin rights (and there are a few out there).
As for it being the biggest change since the 3.11/95 upgrade Im confused how you could even relate the two. Windows 95 was a totally different user experience from Windows 3.x. This isn't. If you look at the last real upgrades for home users (excluding DOS and whatever interface was thrown over it (buttons for DOS anyone?) it was windows 3.11 to 95 for a huge difference in usability, 95 to 98 for a massive boost to hardware support and management (in my opinion anyway) and then 98 to XP for the benefits of NT (After all I don't know many home users who got their hands on 2000 and I discount ME as it was appalling...).
I see no innovation and no reason to upgrade if you are still using Windows. As far as RAM and CPU usage, Well Im not sure I am fairly confident that you could get Vista slimmed down to normal XP performance, but then I can get XP to perform quite well, it just takes a lot of effort. Realistically though Vista is going to be on a new PC or you are going to have to upgrade something (probably add more RAM or upgrade your graphics card rather than upgrade your CPU but still.)
The really sad thing is that 6 months after the launch there will be a huge number of users, and why? because its the best OS? because its worth upgrading to? because its more secure? No. It will have a user base because it comes pre-loaded on N number of new PC's.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:4, Interesting)
You've got to be joking if you're counting this as a major new feature. Wow, it's a Windows logo now and it has a search field ala Spotlight.
Aero Glass isn't "3D-based," it's still a 2D interface but is hardware-accelerated ala OS X circa 2002. Sleep mode and non-admin privileges aren't exactly new features for non-Windows users. In fact, Vista introduces a kludgy hack to get pre-Vista apps to work that expect admin privileges, by emulating a virtual filesystem in the background.
Which won't be included by default.
You mean Calendar, Photo Gallery, and other OS X clones?
Ala OS X.
A performance stats page. That sure requires an entire OS update to get.
This is just not true, and it's MSDN marketing crap. Windows Vista is the same old Windows (based off Server 2003 code) with a visually updated shell (more plastic highlights!), some new APIs, and some internal changes to security, drivers, etc.. Windows 95 was a major update that removed DOS from the user experience and introduced a new Windows interface. The transition from Windows 98 to XP was the biggest transition of all. For users, Vista is just XP with plastic highlights and security changes.
Or you could get a Mac and have everything Vista will claim to have, today (some of it dating back to OS X circa 2001).
sound like a bogon? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://intrinsicsecurity.com/ | Last Journal: Sunday August 28 2005, @11:11AM)
Undoubtedly you meant,
"It sounds as though you have been too near the bogon flux [catb.org]"
or perhaps
"you sound like a Vogon [catb.org]".
Re:an amazing promise (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://justinpedia.com/ | Last Journal: Saturday August 18 2001, @12:45AM)
This doesn't even beging to talk about Network Access Protection, which on the surface sounds like a really good idea. Although, I have my doubts as to Microsofts ability to properly implement it and the relative "foolproofness" of the technology. (It could end up being another registry debacle, for all I know.)
I don't currently have any documentation to link to for backup purposes, but a simple Google search for "Vista Active Directory" should provide plenty of information for the curious.
This is Slashdot, right? (Score:5, Informative)
(Last Journal: Thursday April 19 2007, @10:15PM)
A little news for all of you know-it-all teeny Omega geeks out there who don't pay attention to us geezers talk about processor history... the last 16 bit chip in PCs was the 286.
The 386sx was a 32-bit chip on a 16-bit bus. The 386dx was a 32-bit chip on a 32-bit bus. The 486sx and 486dx were both 32bits internally and externally, the latter having a built-in math coprocessor. The 486dx2 series were chips with the core running at twice the bus speed. The dx4 series usually ran at 3x the bus, but could be run at 4x a slower bus. The first Pentiums were monstrous 5-volt parts with no MMX. Then there were the Intel Pentium Pro and the AMD k5. Then the Pentium MMX and Pentium II vs. AMD k6/k6-2/k6-3, while Cyrix actually looked threatening for a while with the 6x86 series. Then the Athlon and Athlon XP took off, the Pentium 3 and Celeron lost a little ground, and the Cyrix M2 was a laughing stock. For a while Via and Transmeta had some somewhat promising offering in the mobile/low power embedded space (where AMD has the Geode positioned).
That brings us to the current chips. In case you're still lost, that includes Pentium 4 / P4EE / Celeron / Pentium D / Celeron D / Pentium M vs. the Athlon XP / Athlon 64 / Athlong 64FX / Sempron / Athlon 64 x2 / Turion / Turion x2.
Damn, it's a sad day when
Re:Call it what it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Sunday November 05 2006, @05:31AM)
To be fair, I would call this a failure rather than a fraud. They probably believed their own claims about WinFS at the time that they made their promises.
-jcr
Re:Call it what it is... (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, plenty of corporations might lie, but how many companies can get away with telling the same lie over and over and over again?
"Yeah, sure, WinFS will be in this one. It's not like last time, or the time before that, or the time before that. We mean it this time."
Re:an amazing promise (Score:4, Informative)
Incorrect..... (Score:5, Informative)
(http://kaiwai.blogspot.com/)
The original announcement then was that WinFS would not ship in the RTM of Microsoft Windows, and instead, it'll be offered at a later date, as either a seperate download or part of a service pack.
The new article says that they won't ship it at all, not even as a seperate download.
So lets recap, it goes from being included to shipping seperately to not shipping at all.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Insightful)
And just think, enterprises rely on this company's OS, which is so internally complicated that its own developers call it "broken." It's amazing the economy came to rely on a company so unreliable.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft isn't unreliable, not when viewed from the proper perspective. Microsoft is almost one-hundred-percent reliable when it comes to pulling the wool over the eyes of gullible customers, which they have managed to do to a customer base numbering in the hundreds of millions. That kind of reliability doesn't just happen, you know. It takes true dedication and an unwavering belief in one's own rightness. Ask yourself just how many politicians would give their left testicle to dissemble with such awe-inspiring efficiency. When someone can perform some complicated task with the appearance of effortlessness, it is a sign of true competence in action. With Microsoft, lies and deceit come so naturally one has to believe that one is in the presence of greatness.
Of course, if they'd focused even a fraction of that effort to the end of producing reliable software, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Granted, in the past several years they've improved substantially, but that still leaves untold millions of copies of Windows 3.1, '95 and '98 to be explained.
Re:an amazing promise (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, all of that boils down to one simple thing: The left hand REALLY has no idea what the right hand is doing. What makes you think that their marketing team is any different?
Its easy to point the finger and cry that they lied, but is it really a lie if they didn't know any better?
Re:HFS++ looking pretty sharp now eh? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HFS++ looking pretty sharp now eh? (Score:4, Informative)
(Last Journal: Friday April 27 2007, @02:20PM)
Any filesystem could do this - you could do it using the DOS FAT filesystem. I think Spotlight is cool (though slow), but it's definitely add-on technology.
I wrote a full-text search index for Incisive Media which currently has over a million pages indexed - maybe a few hundred million word instances in total. Searching for phrases of words takes on the order of a tenth of a second. It takes a measurably long time to index and re-index, but it's blindingly-fast at search. Since you search a lot more than you index, it works for them. I think Spotlight got the balance wrong, or used the wrong technological solution.
Re:HFS++ looking pretty sharp now eh? (Score:4, Insightful)