WinFS Gets the Axe

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?"

an amazing promise

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]:

On top of the fundamentals, Longhorn features three major innovations. It sports an XML-based visual presentation system, code-named Avalon; a new file system, dubbed WinFS; and new technology for communications between applications and devices, code-named Indigo.

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

How long has the promise of WinFS been on the table?

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

See.. DNF Is based on WINFS.. too bad for the delay..

Re:an amazing promise

Of course, what do you think the whole Vista release is? It's windows XP + more CPU and RAM usage. Nothing special or useful. It's pretty pitiful that developers being paid 6 figures work at a slower pace than volunteer open-source developers. It also fits into Microsoft's motto: Less Later. Just like Halo 2, one of the most anticipated games was out years late and really sucked.

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

They'll probably just add some crappy RAM and CPU hogging features and call it inovative.

Don't forget the DRM, or the dollars added to the price.

Rehash of XP

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

does anybody trust microsoft to actually produce a firewall that stops everything either way that isn't explicitly authorised by the user? does anyone trust microsoft not to bypass it for microsoft's own purposes? sorry, but I and many people like me have lost ALL trust in microsoft.

Re:Rehash of XP

Yes, when MS decided to include WGA in Windows Updates, I decided they needed to be sandboxed from my important data.

Re:Rehash of XP

"Quit making excuses for Microsoft. They already have a very expensive PR dept for that sort of thing."

Who do you think is paying him?

Re:Rehash of XP

How about Media Center, DVD Maker? You know, all the iTools from the Apple world and then some.

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!

Make no mistake, this is a huge change, at least as big as the change from Windows 3.1 to 95.

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.

It's more than 6 years in the making.

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.

Are you really that blinded by hatred of Microsoft that you think 6 years and thousands of programmers have accomplished nothing?

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

Well, as someone who's fucking hammered, (introduced to a new tequila today) I have to say, I don't really care. I've been a windows user since 3.1, and a fairly steady gamer since Wolf 3d came out. But for the last 2 years, I've been linux only. Because it works, and I can learn what it's doing and why.

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

There may be nothing in the OS that compels you to upgrade, but that's never stopped microsoft before... There will always be something, and most likely that will be forced by a third party.

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

Parts of the API that are in such constant flux that you can't rely on them from one OS revision to the next? Check.

For example?

Re:Rehash of XP

This is ridiculous. Sure SMB works greaet on Windows...it's the native network filesystem for Windows! That's like somebody chiding Microsoft's support of AFP, Apple's network filesystem protocol.

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

Bub, WHO CARES about Media Center? The majority of all Windows user will not use it. The majority of all Windows users will never plug their PC into a TV. Media Center is nearly irrelevant. It's just another piece of bundled MS crap that makes it harder for anyone to compete. It really should be a separate product.

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

Who needs a worm that shuts down networks for security holes to be a problem? If there is a way to gain unauthorized access, that is a huge problem. I recognize that software will likely always have security issues. They changed a bunch of code in Vista, including quite a bit in the network stack, and quite a number of services. It is a guarantee that Vista will have security flaws that will be exploited in short order. That's why you wait and let the suckers, er, early-adopters, get slammed, and let a service pack get released before you *every* use a MS product.

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

Self-healing is one of the worst mis-features...
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

Holy Koolaid dude!

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

You should actually read what is being said before making statements which clearly illustrate that you have no idea what you're talking about. The concept wasn't about comparing Vista to other platforms, it was about comparing Vista to previous versions of Windows.

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.

There are six operating systems on that disc

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.

Your point falls so flat on its ass its amazing you don't hit your head more. OS X doesn't come with the reporting tools that Vista comes with. It won't fix a printer driver that doesn't work and a bitlocker-like equivalent has no GUI on OS X as shipped.

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.

Microsoft of today is quite a bit different than the Microsoft of 10 years ago.

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.

Vista won't work for everyone but thats not news, its not perfect, not news either. Of course OS X, all the BSDs and all the Linuxs out there aren't either.

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

Most of these things that you mention are fixes to sub-par elements of the OS. These aren't new innovative things to be excited about, these are basic functions that any OS would be embarrassingly incapable without, in short, the things you mention are the ante to just keep playing in the next-gen OS game:

- 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... ... Windows Movie Maker? Windows Mail? You can't say that with a straight face surely!?
- 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

Of all the features that I have seen or heard of that are supposed to be in the final incarnation of vista I cannot find one that is not either 1) a tweak, 2) something already available in either Mac OS or Linux or 3) A fix of something that is broken in XP. In short Vista is not at this point coming across as innovative. Actually if I think about it it appears that its Microsoft playing catch up.

  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

Unless you count the new start menu

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.

the "sleep" mode (suspend to hibernate), the 3d-based Aero Glass, the "everybody's a user" security model

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.

the new XPS print system

Which won't be included by default.

the bundle of included apps

You mean Calendar, Photo Gallery, and other OS X clones?

the new WiFi networking model that can remember which security settings for which network

Ala OS X.

the new "Performance Statistcits" page on the computer management

A performance stats page. That sure requires an entire OS update to get.

Vista is easily the biggest change in Windows since the 3.11 / Win95 upgrade.

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?

"Sorry dude you sound like a bogan"

bogons don't make noise.

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

The only thing I haven't seen mentioned in these discussions is what I find most important about Vista: the new AD policy controls. The number of configurable elements in AD has increased by, what?, two-fold? Now, I would love to argue that many of those should have been there in the first place (such as windows power management controls), but the simple fact is that they weren't. The addition of the multitude of new controls, some which should have been there all along, like the aforementioned power management controls, and some of which are necessary due to new technologies, such as WiFi and other emerging security concerns, means that from an IT stand point, I will have greater control over my client's network of PCs. I will be able to better push down a standardized desktop environment to my users at the simple click of a few buttons, not to mention the several new levels of security settings that the end users will never see (unless they actually try to stick the verbally prohibited USB Drive in their machine).

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?

Hey, a guy says 16-bit 486 and you people pick on him for a bunch of other shit?

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 /. goons give a hard time over spelling, vocabulary, grammar, and anything else they can find but miss the geeky details.

Re:Call it what it is...

Simply call it what it is, fraud, from a company that knowingly engages in deceptive business practices.

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...

Nothing really special here at all, nor are they the first or only corporation to knowingly engaging in customer fraud.

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

They announced they were cutting it from Vista (then known as Longhorn) in August 2004 - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/188339_msft cuts28.html [nwsource.com].

Incorrect.....

They announced they were cutting it from Vista (then known as Longhorn) in August 2004 - http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/188339_msft [nwsource.com] cuts28.html.

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

Hell, it makes you wonder if they had an idea they weren't going to ship even as they demoed WinFS at TechEd just two weeks ago.

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

It's amazing the economy came to rely on a company so unreliable.

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

How many articles have we read that tell us that the boys over at Redmond lack organization? There's the famous story about the two Office development teams that built two versions of Office with incompatible file formats, because neither team knew about the other. There's all the stories about managers being forced to lie to make time table deadlines.

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?

So ext3 was a clean sheet re-do? Isn't it backward compatible with ext2? Indeed, isn't it just ext2 with journaling?

Re:HFS++ looking pretty sharp now eh?

Actually, spotlight doesn't have anything to do with HFS+ metadata. It builds a separate index of the data into two files stored in the root-dir of each filesystem. It uses mdimporter plugins to allow different file-formats to be parsed, so any arbitrary file can have metadata extracted and inserted into Spotlight's index.

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?

"For example, with FAT16, there's no way to get the file-changed notifications that Spotlight needs to know when to reindex a file."

Of course it can. The filesystem is irrelevant. A feature like this would be present in the driver's "write" function (or at a similar level), and could be implemented in several ways (which I'll skip so as to not get bogged down in details). The storage medium matters not one bit.

Re:Bzzzzt ...Wrong. Thank you for playing

Wrong. It's the hooks into the filesystem that allow notification for spotlight to update.

To be more precise, it's the hooks into the VFS layer that allow notification for Spotlight to update. Take a look at bsd/vfs/vfs_vnops.c [apple.com] in xnu (you might need to sign up for a free ADC Online membership [apple.com] in order for that link to work). In particular, take a look at vn_close - in particular the ..._fsevent calls. (NOTE: this is not a published interface, and is subject to change without notice. Don't start using it in your apps unless you're prepared for an app to stop working in a future release; it might continue to work in future releases, or it might not.)

My home directory at work is on an NFS server, and everything under it it's indexed by Spotlight. It happens to be on an HFS+ partition on the server, but Spotlight on my machine has no clue that it happens to be on HFS+, and the indexing of my stuff there is done by Spotlight running on my machine, not on the server, so no hooks into HFS+ were used to do the change notification (because, among other things, no such hooks exist; the hooks are in the VFS layer, above the individual file systems).

Perhaps...

Maybe it was supposed to be "WhenFS?" (FP?)

Re:What reason to buy?

I hope Vista will come with some serious eye-candy

If the betas are any indication, you'll be disappointed.

-jcr

Re:What reason to buy?

Actually, there was one thing that I was quite impressed with in the Vista beta; it's moderately hidden in the file/directory property window, but there's actually a tab that allows you to open an old version of a directory and view the files that were in it in that older version. It also appeared to automatically save "checkpoints" regularly.

I was really wondering exactly how they had implemented that. It looked rather ugly, since it (by looking at the path) appeared to go to a specially named SMB share at localhost (and I'm not very surprised either -- Microsoft doing something in an ugly manner? No way!), but even so, it definitely was there. I've been looking for details about it, but found none. Does anyone know how it is implemented?

Re:What reason to buy?

Since when do people buy windows?

They'll just go along buying computers with windows pre-installed.

Of course it has

If they didn't put back WinFS, they couldn't use it as vapo^W a feature of their next product. And when that product comes out, they'll push it back to the product after that, just like they've been doing for the past seven or eight years or so.

WinFS is the perpetual motion machine of vapourware. They are constantly promising it for their next product, but they never seem to deliver. That doesn't stop $NEXT_PRODUCT from being compared favourably with the competition because of WinFS by PHBs though.

Hehe

Their structured, indexed filesystem that operates much like a database, will be released with their database software!

Is it just me, or does that sound slightly redundant?

Carry on....

a. WinFS had difficulty functioning over a network
b. Microsoft's target customer is business
c. Businesses use networks

Therefore, WinFS would not be suited for business usage, making it unimportant.

Hey, if everyone wants to bag on Microsoft not making a next generation file system, what is stopping Linux and the Open Source community from doing it? Oh, that's right- it's easier to just complain about MS than to actually get your hands dirty. Nevermind then, carry on.

Re:Carry on....

a. WinFS had difficulty functioning over a network
b. Microsoft's target customer is business
c. Businesses use networks

Therefore, WinFS would not be suited for business usage, making it unimportant.

You misspelt making it a really bad design decision.

Hey, if everyone wants to bag on Microsoft not making a next generation file system, what is stopping Linux and the Open Source community from doing it?

The open-source community does have innovation in their filesystems. Take a look at ReiserFS or ZFS for example.

Re:Carry on....

Google has a video [google.com] of Hans Reiser talking about his vision of the Holy Grail of file systems, rather similar to what Microsoft has been promising. The difference is that he's moving toward it in baby steps (Reiser1, 2, 3, 4) and releasing those steps as he goes.

Uhhh no.

I'm a supporter of open source software as much as the next guy, and I wish what you said were true, but it simply isn't.

Reiser, JFS, and EXT3 are definitely journaled, and they do allow metadata to be stored with files, but they're NOTHING like what was intended with WinFS. And in all actuality WinFS doesn't really count as a filesystem per se, at least not like the ones you mentioned.

WinFS sits on top of NTFS, and is nothing more than an abstraction layer. It lets you do potentially crazy things like (and I'm making this up, purely for example purposes): "SELECT * FROM documents WHERE type IS image AND SOUNDSLIKE ohhhyeaahh"

If you're curious what WinFS is all about give the wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] a read.

The closest comparison (I can think of) to WinFS in the open source world (which one would argue is already better since it's not total vaporware) is Gnome Storage [gnome.org]. There's also GnomeVFS, and the creators of the now defunct BeOS had a wonderfully similar BFS that supported relational style queries. There's probably tons more that I'm not aware of as well.

I predict we'll begin to see more and more of these abstracted file system layers in the future, but they're no replacement for (and will be useless without) an underlying filesystem architecture like Reiser, XFS, NTFS, etc, etc.

Re:Carry on....

what is stopping Linux and the Open Source community from doing it? Oh, that's right- it's easier to just complain about MS than to actually get your hands dirty. Nevermind then, carry on.

Actually, there is an open source community helping to develop a next-generation filesystem right now. In fact, it's already being used in production environments! It's called ZFS, and you can find out more about that community here:

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/ [opensolaris.org]

What is ZFS you ask? Find out here:

http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/whatis / [opensolaris.org]

ZFS highlights include:

• Pooled Storage Model
• Always consistent on disk
• Protection from data corruption
• Live data scrubbing
• Instantaneous snapshots and clones
• Fast native backup and restore
• Highly scalable
• Built in compression
• Simplified administration model

Overviews of ZFS technology can be found here:

http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/zfs_learning_c enter.jsp [sun.com]
http://www.sun.com/emrkt/campaign_docs/expertexcha nge/knowledge/solaris_zfs.html [sun.com]

Yes

Does this spell the end for the true relational storage paradigm that Microsoft has been promising since Windows 95?

Yes. As Mini-Microsoft puts it [blogspot.com]:

Aspects of WinFS are being rolled into other products, WinFS is going away, and that grand relational-filesystem is going back into ivory-tower incubation. Great. So how much money and cross-team integrated innovation randomization did we invest in WinFS?

Is this why Mark Zbikowski left Microsoft (for those that wonder why I keep bringing up MarkZ: he had been with the company for over 25 years. Only Bill and Steve have been at Microsoft longer. His departure: mmm, kind of big. The silence about it, internal and external, is weird, to me.)?

WinFS now joins a series of other broken promises from Microsoft. Interesting that just two weeks ago, they were demoing WinFS at TechEd. At this point, I'm really surprised customers don't treat this as flat-out lying on the part of Microsoft. Overpromise and never deliver. This company is a sinking ship.

Re:Opposites Distract.

It's in CVS.

ReiserFS

And meanwhile ReiserFS [namesys.com] on Linux provides much of the functionality today that WinFS only promised for the future.

Re:ReiserFS

As far as I understand, Reiser4 is meant to provide a foundation that can be extended through the use of plug-in(s) without reformatting or converting a volume. Reiser4 is only a framework where operatation's on the underlying store is filtered through plug-ins to make the filesystem appear completely different depending on the plug-in an application uses. Plug-ins allow the store to appear as different structures to different applications simultaneously. Specific plug-ins such as a relational directory structure are coded separately and are mixed and matched without conflict between applications.
ReiserFS' framework is kind of like Zope while a view (such as said relational directory) would be a Zope product. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Did Microsoft reach Cairo or not?

From what I remember the funky file system was the last piece of the Cario product/suite of technologies to need to ship since Allchin announced it in 1991. Sadly for Allchin, they were unable to deliver on the last great promise of Cario before he leaves, and the poor guy waited 15 years for it too.

News Flash...

Windows Vista has now been renamed Windows XP Service Pack 3. More at 11!

Be

What's really sad is that BeOS had a woking usable dbFS TEN YEARS AGO!!!! I bet Visa idles more RAM and CPU resources than an BeBox had to begin with.

Re:Be

anywhere near being comparable

Yes, all of the others you mentioned actually exist.

Re:Be

Be had an easy target - a one-user no-security OS written from scratch in a single implementation language with zero legacy anything, and no particularly harsh IO or uptime demands.

enrich?

Why do microsoft bods keep using the term 'rich' to descibe their technology?

Most notably, how is it that they seem to apply it to technology that never gets to the production stage.

It's almost as if they feel it aboo to admit that their technology is untested, nay imaginary.

I don't care if they have some in house code. If it isn't in circulation, it's not technology, it's a unproven concept, and definatelly not 'rich'

Re:I had my doubts about WinfFS

BeOS had an implementation of a fully relational filesystem. They dropped it in early versions and replaced it with a hybrid. It worked. And it worked amazingly well.

Microsoft could only hope to accomplish what BeOS/BeFS did.

Re:Smart Move - NOT!

A relational file systems is the next generation of OS design and a necessary evolution of the concept.

Put it this way, your computer stores hundreds of thousands of files, the current paradigm of treating them as files stored in a folder tree is absolutely antiquated and ridiculous.

I should be able to ask my operating system, "Show me all my picture files", and it simply can list ALL the image files on my computer, regardless of how or where they are stored. Features like Spotlight in OS X or Google Desktop are "nice" ways of trying to deal with this problem in a folder tree, but they are just an expensive to generate index file and it takes way too much time to return a result. Spotlight not only has to return if the index entry for a file matches, but it also has to verify if the file still exists on disk. I could take minutes for spotlight or Google desktop to return ALL image files on your computer. You will also notice that these systems often display something like (and 5000 more) link, this means that in order to have the search return results quick enough, it didn't REALLY find all 5000 files, it just says that according to its index file, there appears to be 5000 more image files, when you click on the link, it take more time to finally list all these files. Indexing a folder based tree structure is a solution, but its not an ideal solution. It is limited by the limitations of an antiquated file tree structure.

In a relational file system, if I ask for all image files stored on my computer, the result should be instantaneous, or near to it, as the fact that the file exists as a database entry means the file exists in reality. The time required for the results is simply the time required to build a query and return a result from a database.

Also, why do we even have to name files? Why do we have to give them a file extension. These are all antiquated file system concepts which are completely meaningless for a modern OS. A relational file system stores more then just a file name and a file type, I should be able to search for a file by date, description, keyword in the file, etc, etc, etc. I should not only be allowed to name the file, but provide any meta tags I want to help me locating that file quickly. An extension was a cheap way to get the OS to launch or open a file related to a specific program, but it would be completely unnecessary if the file itself embedded its type or had an entry in a database record. The name of a file would purely be a description and only one of many ways to identify a file.

Ultimately, a relational file system will allow such concepts as "Show me the letter about taxes I wrote to Bob Smith last week." and it will return the email or document you wrote, period. You don't care what the file name is. You don't care what type of file it may be, whether it was an email or text document. A file system should know that a file exists on your computer that is a texted based document, including keywords taxes and Bob that was generated within a week of the current date. This is a sorely needed concept in ANY OS, no OS to date has anything near that powerful a concept. There is no reason for a file system not to be able to handle these requests, and if we EVER want something like what we have seen in Star Trek, where people can ask a computer real language queries, we NEED a relational file system.

Relational files systems will bring a whole new level of superior storage capability to computers that will eventually start storing millions of files. We can't just keep a "lean and mean" tree based folder structure, that paradigm was never intended to manage millions of files.

I applaud Microsoft for at least trying, because unlike Google or Apple, they realize that the future is in a database driving relational file system and not stop gap pseudo-solutions like indexing. Its obviously a difficult concept to implement, but once anyone is able to implement the idea, it will be a VERY welcomed concept and improve the functio

Next year on E3

Duke Nukem WinFS Edititon

Stronger Copland Simile

"Copland is to Mac OS 8 as Longhorn is to Vista" seems to be becoming more true every day.

Though it was promised as a fundamentally ground up re-invention (Pink, Copland, System 8), the Mac OS 8 product that was actually shipped was mostly a cosmetic upgrade with the bits of the promised technologies that could be made to work. The new graphics architecture became a new font subsystem. The new document archicture (without developed parts making use of it) became a built-in web architecture. System wide document content searching became better file finding. The goal became to try to keep whatever anticipation was already built but jettison the "hard problems" of making it actually work in the ways that were promised. Tell everyone that Feature X has evovled into something beyond what we had ever anticipated rather than the world passed us by while we were shooting for an old target.

It may be that Microsoft still has the inertia to pull off an almost completely cosmetic update, but it's going to get pretty ardurous environment on the development teams. After all, the goal isn't going to be to even ship a feature reduced product. It's going to be to ship cosmetic filler that covers up the need for what was really promised. Maybe Blackcomb or Fiji or whatever it's called now, will become a stage for the proper solution, but that's a very big IF.

Re:Stronger Copland Simile

I do think that OS 8 had one thing going for it that Vista wont:

The combination of a significant increase in the amount of PPC native code in the System & Finder's internals and an improved 68k emulator meant that lots of people's computers performed faster than they did with the previous release.

MS will accomplish that feat shortly after they cure the common cold.

Re:Stronger Copland Simile

"Copland is to Mac OS 8 as Longhorn is to Vista" seems to be becoming more true every day.

I hate this analogy because it's completely free of any context to the business situation. When Apple was talking up Copland, they were getting their profits killed by Windows 95 systems, and they badly needed an OS with basic modern features like Preemptive Multitasking and Memory Protection [both of which you left off your list].

Windows XP needs a fair amount of refinement, but it doesn't really need a Copland/OSX style major upgrade. [What you call a "real solution" ... to what problem?] Microsoft took it upon themselves with all these "Apollo Program" scale features that nobody was really asking for, and they couldn't really deliver. IMO, they would be much better served with sorter, more incremental updates to XP much like Apple has been doing with 10.2/10.3/10.4/etc, and just integrate these things when they're ready.

Anyway, nobody called Apple's Quartz "a cosmetic upgrade" when it came out, and Vista still has the more advanced Avalon imaging model, so perhaps you should pull back on the hyperbole.

End of Relational storage?

Does this spell the end for the true relational storage paradigm that Microsoft has been promising since Windows 95?"

Absolutely not! Apple will someday invent it and Microsft will copy it.

Giving up a decade late

Anyone remember BeFS [wikipedia.org] it came out in 1996, supported most of the "difficult and innovative" features WinFS was advertized to have, and WORKS. Its not quite relational, but it has extensive indexed metadata that makes it act as if it were. There's an open-source reimplimentation [bug-br.org.br]. Be, Inc. really did have some great technology, pity they couldnt make a buisness of it.

Always on the Cards

Always thought this would happen. Not only was the original concept of WinFS pretty difficult from a technology point of view, but people at Microsoft suddenly thought: "Hang on. If we deliver a rich database storage engine integrated into Windows then that threatens the existence of SQL Server." This is confirmed quite adquately by this:

"We are choosing now to take the unstructured data support and auto-admin work and deliver it in the next release of MS SQL Server, codenamed Katmai. This really is a big deal - productizing these innovations into the mainline data products makes a big contribution toward the Data Platform Vision we have been talking about."

Notice the word 'productising' (productizing for you yanks). Productising here means "Why give this away for free in Windows where it would actually threaten the existance of SQL Server when we can just bundle it into the next release of SQL Server and charge people more for the *new* features?!". This is confirmation, if ever it were needed, that WinFS is totally dead as a Windows component. You're not going to be able to tag your files, or 'objects, with metadata and search for it seamlessly along with new integrated and built-in Windows file management support out of the box in Windows. Unless of course, you cough up for SQL Server and maybe even some client license add-ons into the bargain.

I also really, really love how every Microsoft employee has it drilled into them from an early age that any decision made, in reality for the pure benefit of Microsoft, is actually a decision made for the benefit of customers and as a result of extensive customer feedback! This is so deeply embedded in them I'm sure they believe it themselves now:

Today I have an update about how we are delivering some of the WinFS technologies. It represents a change to our original delivery strategy, but it's a change that we think that you'll like based on the feedback that we've received....It's great technology and we are super-excited to be productizing this way. And most importantly, it's what people have been asking for - as we work with customers, we're constantly hearing that they want many of the technologies to be more broadly available in the data platform products. That feedback was taken seriously."

Yer. Especially where it means more money for us.......

Not really surprising

The fact is, what they are trying to do hasn't really been done before. AND, they're trying to tack it onto the enormous pile of legacy code that is Windows.

I wonder if the problem of integrating it into Windows itself stems from the fact that next to ZERO file formats that are currently in widespread use by the computing world know anything about "metadata", which is kind of key to the whole "SQL as a filesystem" concept.

Plus, I've always wondered how they thought all that metadata was going to get there in the first place. Most users don't even bother to name their files properly (e.g., every folder is named New Folder), and now they're expected to *decribe* them, too? Doesn't seem likely.

Re:Not really surprising

MP3s which were ripped from your own CDs have good metadata, if the information was put in by the ripping program. If you download them from the internet, well, let's just say there's varying quality. Then there's images with EXIF data that have lots of good meta data like shutter speed, whether or not the flash was used, and when it was taken. Unfortunately, it can't tell you what is in the picture. That is the most important piece of data. I think MetaData is dead on the personal computer, because nobody wants to be a data entry clerk. People just find it easier to put their files in an organized place, so they can find them later. People don't want to spend hours entering data.

It's because of the name!

I thought "WinFS" meant "Windows File System", but I just checked Wikipedia and it actually means "Windows Future Storage". Well, if it is ever released, it is no longer in the future, right? It's like "Duke Nukem Forever": if it ever gets released, you're no longer waiting forever...

Vista has leprosy

Does Vista have software leprosy?

From the almighty Wiki:

* WinFS is the codename for a planned relational database layer built on top of NTFS, and is loosely based on SQL Server 2005. In August 2004, Microsoft announced that WinFS would not be included in Windows Vista. This was due to time constraints in developing the technology. Microsoft has been working on this technology since the mid 1990s. For a time, Microsoft had said that WinFS would be released separately of Vista, but on June 23, 2006, Microsoft announced that they decided to integrate some of the developed features into the next versions of ADO.NET and SQL Server, effectively cancelling the WinFS project.
* Due to scheduling issues, the Windows PowerShell, code-named Monad will not be included in Windows Vista. However, Microsoft has announced that it will be available as a separate download in the fourth quarter of 2006
* Owing to significant difficulties in getting third-party developers to support the system (particularly due to the lack of support for writing for the Trusted Operating Root using .NET managed code), the Next-Generation Secure Computing Base architecture was abandoned for Windows Vista.[14] Some aspects of the NGSCB initiative, such as support for Trusted Platform Module chips, are still present, though its role is now limited to being a provider of cryptographic functions which will support BitLocker Drive Encryption.
* Support for Intel's Extensible Firmware Interface was originally slated to be included with Vista, but has been removed due to what Microsoft has described as a lack of support on desktop computers.[15] The UEFI 2.0 specification (which replaces EFI 1.10) wasn't completed until early 2006, and as of mid-2006, no firmware manufacturers have completed a production implementation. Microsoft has stated that it intends on incorporating 64-bit UEFI support into a future update to Vista, but 32-bit UEFI will not be supported.
* PC-to-PC Sync, a Peer-to-peer technology for synchronizing folders on multiple computers running Vista, was removed due to quality concerns. It may arrive sometime in the future in some form.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Vista#XP_feat ures_dropped [wikipedia.org]

Well, all I know is, everytime I think of cutting up my partition for Vista Beta, I end up in the shower sobbing Unclean, Unclean. Still haven't tried it, Would be nice to skip this whole OS cycle.

Still a proud debian pc.

Microsoft and/or Windows have hit the wall?

I think Microsoft may have reached the limits of their competence, at least as far as the Win32 platform goes. They no longer seem very capable of making significant improvements to the Windows platform. Perhaps the Jenga pile is just too tall now, and they're running out of ways to add more pieces without it all crashing down on them?

Not that I'm blaming them -- all software designs have limits, past which they can't be stretched any further and still be made to work. But perhaps Microsoft should be looking at starting over with a fresh new OS design (with backwards compatibility provided via virtual machine emulation only, a la MacOS Classic running in MacOS/X)?

Re:Microsoft and/or Windows have hit the wall?

That's the maddening part of the Vista story. You're absolutely correct that Vista should have been a new NT-based operating system starting from a clean codebase designed to carry Microsoft another 20 years, and pre-Vista/Win32 apps should have run in a sandbox environment. After all, Microsoft owns Virtual PC, and they're shipping an Express version for free! They've already got the perfect sandbox to aid them in supporting legacy applications. It's a real slap on the forehead that they didn't go the obvious route.

In retrospect, it's remarkable how smart Apple was to go the route they did with OS X, leveraging open source technology so that they didn't have to develop the whole operating system themselves and could concentrate on constructing a user experience on top of what was already well-tested code. It's a clean, elegant solution that's allowed them to outpace Microsoft at an incredible rate.

Microsoft has to face reality

and must cut out features from Vista in order to ship it. There are too many features in Vista that Microsoft cannot make a release deadline unless they cut some features out of Vista. WinFS can be added in later, or be part of a service pack.

Actually Microsoft might have better luck with EXT2/EXT3/JFS etc file system support that is superior to NTFS/FAT16/FAT32 and the standards are already well published and should be easier for Microsoft to adopt than the WinFS system. Microsoft should look out because ReactOS is planning for EXT2/EXT3/JFS file system support and it is starting to run some Windows applications without problems (most Windows programs have issues, but ReactOS is slowly improving) and while ReactOS is not ready for Prime-Time, in a few years, who knows? Once it adds Windows driver support, DirectX support, sound card support, and other features, possibly by a 1.0 release (now in 0.30 RC1 release) it might steal some thunder from Microsoft Windows and Vista, if it runs on systems that Vista won't run on.

Vista is a resource hog anyway, it needs 512M of RAM just to run, and still the swap file keeps growing. You will find many effects will be disabled by some systems just to get a decent performance out of Vista. I think the public release Beta ISO was like almost 4 gigs in size, showing how huge Vista really is. I figure it is like Microsoft stuffing 15 pounds of manure into a 5 pound bag.

Me I am going to stick with Windows XP and ignore Vista until the service packs fix Vista to be stable enough on hardware I can afford to run it on. I'll use Linux until then as well. I am keeping my eye on ReactOS to see if it reaches XP level success, and then I might switch over to it.

WinFS is not relational

There are some fishy things here.

One is that WinFS was not promised for now: it was promised for, say, 15 years ago. MS Access was said by Microsoft to be a first step towards a totally relational OS really soon then. Just as Cairo (MS Windows NT 4) was supposed to be totally OO, and now we are told native code will still be with us for several years yet.

But the worst thing is that they don't understand what they intend to ship. WinFS is not relational [dbdebunk.com], not it can ever be, since being based on (a bastardised version of) ISO SQL it violates the basic fundaments of the relational model. Incidentally, this non-relationalness makes it much larger, less performant, more complex, less powerful than it should be. Coincidence?

when will people learn?

The idea of making file systems more database-like has been around for as long as there have been databases. There have been dozens of implementations. The upshot? It doesn't seem to work well for general purpose computing.

Where it does work is some niche areas of business computing. Integrating WinFS into SQL Server makes sense. Of course, other database vendors have had equivalent technology for a long time.

All in all, with WinFS and SQL Server, Microsoft has retraced the evolution of the industry--only a few decades late. So, it's business as usual.

Too many are missing the point

Too many people I talk to (and read) have the wrong idea of what the latest WinFS iteration was and what it was supposed to do. WinFS was intended to provide sql query like filtering to files on unstructured file metadata. While this is certainly 'file search' for those who know how to make it work, it was not a consumer friendly mechanism. It was intended to be the underlying API that a consumer friendly search like desktop search would use.

If you read the article(s) you will understand that a) it grew into something more / bigger that overlaps with ORM mapping (and what was ObjectSpaces) b) it will exist in the not too distant future (next SQL server version) and c) consumer friendly desktop searches and apps you probably haven't even thought of will be able to use it. For example, why not search SNMP trap data, html log data etc. the same way you search for a file? You will be able to.

Obligatory MS bash - the fact that it has taken so many iterations does worry me as to how much longer it might take before I can actually use the technology. We are probably talking at least the next version of office - 4 years away? Thinking back, that was obvious even from the last public WinFS CTP, so I guess this whole 'WinFS is dead' (which it's not) announcement is no surprise, just a re-packaging of what I already knew.

It is not the end of the WinFS concept - it is the end of the WinFS stand alone product and the beginning of the concept's availability as an enabling technology.

Hard Problems and Large Corporations

This announcement makes more sense than I think people recognize, particularly if you posit that they ran into performance difficulties.

Remember that they were going to put it all into the filesystem? Then they put it into a layer above the FS. Bet you a bitflip that they found performance problems resulting from mixing large files and small files in the same filesystem. It is very easy to have such problems, you have to get quite clever to avoid them, and expend a lot of effort on it. Rather than take the extra time, they pulled the enhanced semantics out of the filesystem. That was the wrong thing. Then, look at the descriptions of how some of the queries they supported took too long. It is really easy to design things in that area wrong, and get unacceptable performance impacts. Rather than solving the deeply challenging problems, they punted and put the stuff into SQL server. Why? Because people who don't want things to be slow can just not use the feature until they figure out how to make it not cost performance. Of course, that means no OS integration but..... it is so nice to not be designing Reiser4 by committee.

I see Microsoft responding to difficult technical problems not by solving them, but by running from them, and that explains the entire trajectory of WinFS.

Another consideration you can see between the lines is that they don't want to lose the revenue from SQL Server by doing everything that it does in the OS and doing it better. Marketers will do things like make the first release of something only available at a higher price. They do that a lot. They'll do it even if it robs Vista of most of its excitement to do it.

Large corporations often have real problems handling tough research projects.

Reiser4 [namesys.com] took 5 years to get into working at all (v3), and 10 years of sustained development to get right (reiser4), and it is just the storage layer. You can't do that in a large corporation.

In a large corporation you are thinking that you need 3 years to do a project that is a paradigm change, and you go talk to management, and you sense that they have patience for 9-18 months, and you really want to do the project, so you tell them you can do it in 9-18 months.

18 months go by, and you are 1/2 of the way through the first version (you think you are 90% of the way through), and the first version is going to suck badly and take years to be well optimized. Now, if your product is the first in its market, you can make it even though it sucks, and get the money for the version 2. If you are going into a mature market, well, things are tough. Very tough. WinFS is going into a mature market.

Now, into this reality throw corporate managers. They think that if they intimidate the programmers a lot, products ship sooner. So, technical shortcuts get taken. Only problem is, in a product like WinFS, going into a mature market, taking technical shortcuts kills things. Especially since for a product like WinFS the technical shortcuts affect DEEP decisions that you will never be able to reverse out of. Like, whether the enhanced semantics are in the FS layer. Or whether the whole OS is designed around using the enhanced semantics in every component. Then, managers feel the need to prove they are tough about schedules, and they cancel for being late projects that everyone should have known were going to take a long long time because they were hard. There is some very interesting recent research suggesting that if you want an accurate project length forecast, you don't ask for an estimate, you create a betting pool.

The sad thing is, since everyone copies Microsoft, now there will be more people saying that Reiser4 shouldn't do what WinFS backed away from. We can do it. We solved the hard storage layer design problems, our stuff works. Now we can finally go after the enhanced semantics. It took 10 years, but we got the storage layer into the shape we want it in, and one plugin at a time the enha

Re:Hard Problems and Large Corporations

I don't think you understand what WinFS is

I think Hans understands what WinFS is more than you can ever dream of.

So, really, what's left?

So what's left after all this stuff has been removed? Taking account of stuff that's not available for download for other OS's (such as IE 7) and not already in XP by default in some other form (e.g. Outlook Express/Windows Mail):

- Higher system requirements
- "updated" GUI
- Windows DVD maker and some other small utilities
- Lowered privileges (welcome to the new millenium, Microsoft)
- Parental controls
- Speech recognition
- That flash/disk thing
- Drive encryption

To me, that looks like stuff that most people have available to them in one form or another and which, if they don't, they wouldn't ever use. GUI changes are ten-a-penny for Windows, DVD software is bundled with every PC that's capable of doing it or available free, parental controls are widely available for free or quite cheaply (and hardly EVER used anyway because they are just NOT reliable... I speak as a primary school technician who's had to explain that if you google for "Little Red Riding Hood", it's quite possible to find unpleasant stuff that will bypass a filter), speech recognition? Hell, my browser's done it for at least two versions, the libraries are installed with no-end of utilities and it still doesn't work very well at all - most people don't even HAVE a microphone on their computer because there's no practical use for it. There are also dozens of decent voice-recognition programs out there that tie into Windows just fine. Drive encryption is, again, easily available. However, it's not something I'd recommend a newbie to turn on until they were sure they had ten backups of their key or some kind of recovery disk.

It really bugs me that Windows, in every previous incarnation, has missed out "obvious" features, tweaks and utilities and instead bundled stuff that nobody wants/uses. Now they seem to be finally taking that cue and putting stuff that's easily available as freeware into Windows and releasing it as a new OS. A previous example would be Windows Firewall (which came along just after software firewalls had established themselves as a necessity). Unfortunately, they are still missing the obvious things that both ordinary people and the average tech NEEDS in an OS, mainly concerning control over what programs can and can't do.

A fully-installed Windows system has always needed some freeware to prop it up. Let start with "choosing which programs can run at startup". I install Startup Control Panel and StartupMonitor because I WANT to know when a program deigns itself so important that it should want to run at startup without asking me first. I get a pop-up dialog and a choice of whether to allow it to do so, EVERY time it tries. That's useful. That's simple. Complete IT-incompetents realise what it's asking and say no unless they think they need it - it instantly stops computers slowing because of accumlated startup/taskbar icons like RealPlayer, QuickTime, Adobe Acrobat etc. that DO NOT NEED to be loaded at all until I decide to load a RM, MOV or PDF (ARRGHH! What a stupid idea to "preload" these sorts of apps! Anyway...). Where was the OS facility to do that? You could regedit. You could go into some obscure menu in later versions of MS System Information (if you even KNEW how to find it, which most people don't). But nowhere did you EVER get a choice of "do you want to allow this program to run at startup?" or not.

Now, hopefully, someone who's run the Beta will tell me if that's in Vista or not. I would hope yes but I haven't heard of it yet. Also, I always install a Print-To-PDF driver of some sort (depending on the client, either freeware or something from Adobe). It turns ANY file (even Publisher) into a usable, transferrable file format that will print out on any machine (so you can transfer the PDF to a computer with any printer that uses the same paper size and it will pretty much work... that is invaluable in my line of work). Now it looks like MS finally caught up and then Adobe said no? I can't say I blame Adobe and I'm actually wondering why

Re:just another...

Let's get this straight. Microsoft has been promising this as a major feature for Vista for the last four years, and you're surprised when people bitch that it's unceremoniously dropped? And this is part of a series of behaviors that involved dropping Vista features and delaying the product's release! Is your flippant remark about Slashdot somehow supposed to remove Microsoft's technical incompetence in completing its own projects?

Seems to me like MS just couldn't make WinFS as efficient and nice as they had promised so they just scratched it. Nothing wrong with that in my book.

Then they should have designed it better, managed the project better, etc. Again, they were just demoing WinFS two weeks ago! What you're saying is that there's nothing wrong in your book with promising a major feature for almost half a decade and then going back on the promise.