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Database File System

Posted by Hemos on from the no-matching-records dept.

ozy writes "With all the fuss about searching and Spotlight and WinFS, check out the Database File System a completely different interface for your files, implemented in KDE. There is actually a request for developers to join a project to implement this under GNOME and leave how we use the desktop today behind."

5 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. Backups, and being organized in a general way? by manavendra · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...I can kind of see this would make it easy to search and locate documents. What about backups though? How would a user be able to group (manually) related files together, so that the whole bunch can be backed up later, without having to search for all seeminly related (or unrelated) keywords to trace all hitherto-unrelated documents?

    Secondly, with this mass of files being spread over several disks, surely, this is in a way forcing the user to "search" for everything. Or isnt it? Will the underlying FS layer still be accessible in the general way that it is?

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    http://efil.blogspot.com/
  2. Version control would be nice as well by zero-one · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have always thought that version control (file histories, branching and atomic changes) would be nice to have at the file system level. Instead of storing myessay-firstdraft.doc, myessay-seconddraft.doc, myessay-final.doc, the file system should do the work. Then if I want to make a bunch of changes (perhaps I want to try a new page layout), I should be able to commit them as one atomic change (or throw them all away if I change my mind). Then, when I want to make a set of documents with US spelling, I should be able to branch the whole lot (using no disk space) and make the small changes from UK spelling while still being able to integrate other changes I have made.

  3. Comments by the Author by data1 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The author is asking for help to move the project to Gnome.

    Quote:There is of-course the hard choice of platform. I choose KDE? because I am familiar with QT a bit, and because it is inherently object-oriented, being C++ and all. But in my mind GNOME? is much closer to how I would like a desktop system to function. So I would like to go for the GNOME option. I leave KDE developers to do what they want with this, and I am offering them support. But I would like to focus my efforts on GNOME and implementing the above in GNOME.

    Any volunteers?
    In the first place we will need developers. Would you like to join, send me an email (o.gorter@student.utwente.nl) with DBFS and JOIN somewhere in the subject. If you are not a developer, but still would like to help, please revisit this page in a few weeks. There will probably be a community website by then somewhere.

  4. Sigh, Andrew Morton seemed to be right... by greppling · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...when he said on LKML, slightly paraphrased: "The only reason I see to put filesystem semantic enhancements into the kernel, is that it would be socially hard to get people to agree an a single userspace library."

    (In the course of the heated discussion about Reiser4.)

  5. Not Unix by flossie · · Score: 5, Interesting
    the DBFS does not store system files: No shared libraries, no font files or others like that. These are not documents, not files you look up at a day to day basis, and have no place in a file system.

    Whether or not you look at system files every day probably depends on what you are doing with your machine and what you consider "system files" to be. Moreover, this idea would seem to go entirely against the whole UNIX "everything is a file" philosophy which is supposed to be one of the great strengths of UNIX.

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    flossie

    Write now. Defend liberty