WinFS to be available in WinXP

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WinFS to be available in WinXP

Posted by Hemos on Monday March 7, 2005 @05:20AM from the by-bits-and-dribbles dept.

ScooterMcGoo writes "According to a Microsoft Watch blog, WinFS is being back ported for Windows XP. From TFA: WinFS isn't dead, Tom Rizzo, Microsoft's director of product management for SQL Server, recently told Microsoft Watch. In fact, Microsoft is planning to provide an update on the technology at this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in September, he said. Rizzo said that Microsoft is busily back-porting the WinFS file-system technology to Windows XP. It's unclear if Microsoft also is porting WinFS to Windows Server 2003, but such a move would be likely, given that the Redmond software vendor is doing so with Avalon and Indigo."

16 of 428 comments (clear)

Aha, that explains it ... by ggvaidya · 2005-03-07 05:22 · Score: 5, Funny

I thought the Bill-Gates-as-borg icon had a slightly wider smile today ...
Sure... by Quasar1999 · 2005-03-07 05:22 · Score: 5, Informative

I'll believe it when I see it... my sources inside MS (and no, I ain't giving any proof, so believe me or not, I don't give a shit), say that there are very hard deadlines for Longhorn, with features being left out if they don't meet certain benchmarks, etc... so to hear that they are now taking something, and wasting resources back porting it? Especially when they first said it would be dropped from longhorn? I call Bull..

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1. Re:Sure... by maeka · 2005-03-07 05:30 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  I'll believe it when I see it... my sources inside MS (and no, I ain't giving any proof, so believe me or not, I don't give a shit), say that there are very hard deadlines for Longhorn, with features being left out if they don't meet certain benchmarks, etc... so to hear that they are now taking something, and wasting resources back porting it?
  
  As the article states: "Microsoft decided to back-port both Avalon and Indigo to older versions of Windows -- Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 -- in order to maintain backward compatibility and help seed the application-development market, officials said. "
  If Microsoft wants to make WinFS a fundamental part of their strategy, they must back port it. Forcing developers to upgrade before they can develop is foolhardy.
2. Re:Sure... by Swamii · 2005-03-07 05:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Yes, there is a hard deadline for Longhorn, and that is a good thing.
  
  That said, WinFS will not make it into the hard deadline for Longhorn. That said, it will be available freely as a download, and possible as part of Windows Update, for Longhorn and other operating systems including XP and, yes, Win2003, some time after the Longhorn deadline.
  
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3. Re:Sure... by wolfgang_spangler · 2005-03-07 05:41 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  If Microsoft wants to make WinFS a fundamental part of their strategy, they must back port it. Forcing developers to upgrade before they can develop is foolhardy.
  
  I think you misspelled "monopoly"
4. Re:Sure... by superjaded · 2005-03-07 06:00 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Actually, no.
  
  From how I understand it, WinFS will actually be a layer of abstraction above whatever underlying filesystem (FAT32/NTFS) the system is running on. It won't be a new filesystem at all. It holds metadata about each file and makes it easier and faster to find things. Much like the aforementioned Beagle project.
  
  And ext3's journalling is quite different from what WinFS attempts to accomplish. Journalling basically makes it so, like you say, files aren't lost and you don't have to do a time-consuming fsck whenever the partition is not unmounted cleanly like with ext2.
How about Rieser FS (or JFS or XFS) by Anonymous Coward · 2005-03-07 05:22 · Score: 5, Interesting

Can Windows support any other modern filesystems such as Rieser 4?
I'd love to be able to use a filesystem that can be seen in a dual-boot environment; that's better than FAT32 or FAT16; but those are really the only choices now.
WinVapor by Doc+Ruby · 2005-03-07 05:24 · Score: 5, Funny

WinFS announcements are one of Microsoft's most popular products. Thanks for the upgrade!

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Longhorn by 0x461FAB0BD7D2 · 2005-03-07 05:24 · Score: 5, Interesting

If everything will be back-ported to XP and Windows 2003, how does Microsoft plan to make any money off Longhorn, which has cost the company a lot in development time and money?

Do they plan on back-porting the first versions of Avalon, Indigo and WinFS, and then providing feature updates to Longhorn only, forcing customers to update? Or is Longhorn really just XP SP3?
1. Re:Longhorn by bfizzle · 2005-03-07 05:34 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  Maybe thats the point...?
  
  The more news I see about feature of Longhorn it makes me wonder if M$ is pushing more towards the subscription model of their OS. Having users upgrade XP to Longhorn rather then sell Long Horn straight out. Start watching ELUA of these "upgrades" you might find yourself stuck in a subscription service called "Longhorn"
Microsoft has hired... by lbmouse · 2005-03-07 05:26 · Score: 5, Funny

Frankie Avalon and The Indigo Girls?
Re:And I care why? - MS MArket share, thats why by CdBee · 2005-03-07 05:27 · Score: 5, Interesting

It's important to Microsoft as a way of preventing Google Desktop Search and Copernic from gaining mindshare and installed base before they introduce their final version in Longhorn

Incidentally, Copernic 1.5 beta now supports Mozilla Thunderbirds email and contacts and Firefox history and bookmarks - and does it well. This is a double threat to Microsoft, as their vision sees WinFS as a factor which ties people to Outlook and IE6/7

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Re:WinFS by Ironsides · 2005-03-07 05:27 · Score: 5, Informative

I mean, jesus, its a file system, not a damn search engine.

Quote from MS on WinFS:
One of the monumental problems organizations face today is aggregating information that's stored in disparate formats. Knowledge workers have long wanted to be able to search for content independent of format. WinFS allows the user to perform searches based on the metadata of the stored item, regardless of what type of file it is or which application created it.

So not only is it a file system, it is also a search engine.

Source:http://msdn.microsoft.com/data/winfs/

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Re:And I care why? by evn · 2005-03-07 05:40 · Score: 5, Informative

Despite the unforutnate name, WinFS is a service that runs above the filesystem. The data is still stored on a plain old NTFS partition(s).

For traditional file-based data, such as text documents, audio tracks, and video clips, WinFS is the new Windows file system. Typically, you will store the main data of a file, the file stream, as a file on an NTFS volume. However, whenever you call an API that changes or adds items with NTFS file stream parts, WinFS extracts the metadata from the stream and adds the metadata to the WinFS store.

source: Microsoft's WinFS developer page
The data is still just as (in)accessible as it's always been. The meta data is locked away in the WinFS store but we haven't been using that all this time so it's not like we're going to be any worse off.

as for writting NTFS, I suggest you take a look at captive NTFS which lets you read and write your NTFS partitions in Linux with the same confidence that you do in Windows.
Re:What's left for Longhorn? by loraksus · 2005-03-07 05:44 · Score: 5, Funny

You'll find out in 2010.

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Re:WinFS by goofyspouse · 2005-03-07 06:27 · Score: 5, Funny

"So not only is it a file system, it is also a search engine."

Man: WinFS is a desert topping.
Woman: No, it's a floor wax.
Man: Desert topping!
Woman: Floor wax!
Announcer: You are both right...WinFS is both a desert topping *and* a floor wax.