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CNet on WinFS
Weston writes "CNet has posted an article about WinFS, or more specifically, what Bob Muglia (a VP at Microsoft) said about it in a recent interview. According to Muglia, the new filesystem will not replace NTFS, but will incorporate feratures of NTFS, SQL, and XML all into a filesystem which, accoring to Microsoft, will open up a whole new world of information availability. He goes on to describe such a filesystem as the 'holy grail' that is sought by developers. WinFS is slated for release in 2005/06 as part of the Longhorn OS."
easier and more irrevocably!
Yay!
who like the filesystem the way it is. I can find any file in my system within 3 or 4 clicks of a mouse because I keep my files organized. How is the new system going to be faster than that? I don't understand how searching for files every time you need them is faster than a file system hierarchy.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
Why not a little Java thrown in? Or DRM? or TCPA? Or (insert hot new technology here) ? /dev/null, all the while funding MS and driving them to an eventual 3.0 or 4.0 release, which will be Decent, Yet Still Subtly Lacking.
This seems classic MS-predictive-FUD, where people hold their breath for the Next Release, which is a 1.0 version that sucks. Meanwhile, support people and PHBs have committed to it, so its Too Important To Let Fail. Ultimately, it becomes a time and resource sink the likes of which is only matched by
All of this won't help the average user find files easier, and will be massively more bloated and complex (read: too many moving parts, read: Service Pack Hell), and probably REQUIRE that Athlon-64 system we've been drooling over.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I use XML quite a bit in my data-based programs. But I've seen it used WAY too often and in applications where XML just doesn't make any sense (like parsing 1GB files, for instance). XML is a nice tool, but isn't the fastest way to get to data.
That being said, does anyone else think using XML in a filesystem is a horrible way to go? Especially given the hard drive capacity we're seeing today... number of files that can be stored, folders/subfolders, etc...
Unless I misread the article, I just don't see this being a smart move.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
According to sources close to industry experts, a new filing cabinet will be brought to market sometime in the next year or two. Instead of having files, labeled with what their contents are, you will have a master file cabinet, with thousands of records that will give you a map on how to open a drawer and decipher a complex set of instructions to find the paper you're looking for. The system will revolutionize the way papers are stored in folders. Previously, there was no large, cryptic system for shuffling papers around, now there is a standard way to misplace items. No longer will you have to look just in drawers, but you may not be able to even find the cryptic instructions to lead you to the drawer to start looking in. Details are sketchy, but some have eluded to possible bookworm attacks, that could corrupt the cryptography and therefore render your whole filing cabinet useless. Industry experts suggest that an anti-bookworm product could be available shortly to help protect from this.
-- Liberalism is a mental disorder.
He goes on to describe such a filesystem as the 'holy grail' that is sought by developers... ...of high end processors, memory manufacturers, and name brand PC makers, who's sales have been down lately due to current software running well enough on previous generation hardware.
In 1997 Microsoft made a pledge to Internet Enable all of their tehcnologies - and true to their word, even their file-systems are now internet enabled.
It's really easy to administer. Just plug you Windows computer into the internet, wait for a few minuits for a helpfull worm - and PRESTO!!!
You file system is on the Internet Baby!!!
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
And this is the point where it will fail. Look, the concept is nifty, that is true. However common users rarely bother to give a document a good name, so why would you think that they are going to fill in the metadata? (Which you can do by the way in Office documents)
Now imagine this: we are in 2006, you have your digital camera and come home from a long vacation. You want to upload the pics to your machine runninng Windows Longhorn with WinFS. Ah! Right now you get something like 00001.jpg, 00002.jpg etc. How will the camera know what metadata to put for the pictures? It won't... The only way to *enforce* it is to show each and every single picture and prompt for relevant metadata, which of course no sane user is going to fill in. (Imagine doing it for a couple of hundred pictures) It is that simple. Right now you would just create a folder "vacation to Florida May 2003", dump in all the files and be happy.
No, you won't find the files of you and Sophie the classic way.... but unless the metadata entry is correctly entered, you won't with WinFS either.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Filesystems are just inefficient, shitty databases.
And sometimes all I want is a shitty database.
What worries me is that Microsoft already overrides my wishes; if they think they've created the "holy grail", they'll be even more likely yo impose it on me even if I know it's not what I want.
Case in point: Windows 2000 and above has no problem reading FAT32 partitions greater than 32GB in size. But it refuses to create FAT32 partitions > 32GB in size. Why? Because at that size, Microsoft knows better, Microsoft knows you should be uses NTFS and get the benefits of meta-data and journaling.
Except, I don't want the overhead for my MP3 collection. The meta-data's already present in the ID3 tags, and I don't need journaling -- once the ID3 tags are written, they're essential read-only. I want low overhead storage for very large (several MB) files.
And I want something that is a mirror of my portable plaayer, which can only read FAT32, can only read the first partition, and is 60GB. Since my portable only reads FAT32 (but doesn't format), and since Microsoft, in its wisdom knew better than to allow me to format it as FAT32, instead I got to watch it run the drive for over an hour before telling me the partition was too big. Talk about a linux killer app: I nearly had to switch to linux if I wanted to be able to use my portable.
Fortunately for me that the open-source world exists: somebody had actually compiled the linux mkfs for cygwin, and I formatted the portable with it. I can't use Windows' chkdsk on it, of course, and I haven't yet looked at compiling fsck under cygwin to further work around Microsoft's collosal arrogance.
Given my experience, if Microsoft thinks they have the "holy grail" of filesystems, it, and Microsoft's arrogance, will once again be rammed down the throats of every Microsoft user. But by that time, I'm sure I'll have fully transitioned to linux.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
Filesystems are just inefficient, shitty databases.
The fact that file systems are databases has been recognized since, oh, databases were invented. One of the first things IBM tried after inventing the relational database was to replace the file system with it. You can tell how far that went.
The choice to make the UNIX file system the kind of database that it is was deliberate. UNIX file systems are a highly efficient and robust database, with proven metadata, security, and data consistency models. They do almost exactly what people want databases to do with their unstructured data.
For anything else, they use other databases. By a stroke of genius (or maybe just historical inevitability), those more specialized databases can be stored and accessed inside the file system database.
A database file system is quite accurately described as "The Holy Grail": it's an ancient mythological object of no practical value, something that only insane people would pursue.