jrothwell97's Journal: WinFS - dumped. And???

So, Microsoft is facing a huge amount of stick for dumping its futuristic file system manipulation technology, WinFS. The system promised us faster searching, drawer-like file stores where everything is stored in one place, and repositories of files based on their file type, contents, colour and more.

However, I am not surprised that it has been dumped. WinFS was never even a file system - it was a component of Windows that would index all the files on the hard disk, apply the appropriate labels and organise them into a database. It was really quite simple - but MS were taking a long time over it.

So, can WinFS be rescued? Well, GNOME Storage is on the way, which is like WinFS - but works with Linux. And we could always write WinFS ourselves: write a VB program that would index all the files on the disk, organise and label them, and then put them into a viewer integrated into the Windows Explorer. See? Easy. We don't need ADO.NET or any other rubbish for that. A similar thing is already happening in Google's GMail - no folders, just labels and a fast index. So quit moaning, get coding...