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WinFS Beta 1 Released Early
Mouldy Punk writes "Infoworld is reporting that WinFS Beta 1 has been released. The new relational file system for Windows is posted on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. This release is designed to offer developers a preview of WinFS capabilities. WinFS will be in beta when Windows Vista ships and will RTM afterwords. WinFS, when it ships, will be available for download for Windows Vista and possible support for Windows XP is being considered. The distribution mechanism for WinFS will be through an add-on download much like the .NET framework is today. Tom Rizzo also notes that there is a new blog dedicated to Win FS."
I realize that this is a story about WinFS, but I'm hoping someone knowledgeable about GNOME Storage is reading.
I'm just wondering if any progress has been made on GNOME Storage or if it's just completely stagnated (a Seth project stagnating? Why I never!). My guess is all he did was some special natural language interface (which should have been an add-on later) and did no real work on a relational file system.
I wish that guy would finish something for once.
I hope people find it usefull. I tried the Vista beta a month or so ago and I wasn't impressed one bit. Nothing felt different or improved. I don't know if I was expecting some radical changes, but other than the "theme", it looked the same as XP. In fact, judging from "look and feel" it rendered the clear type fonts very blurry compared to xorg on gentoo which I'm currently typing this on.
However, the only thing I can saw I was pleased about was its performance. On a 2.4 ghz celeron with 512 mb of ram, it ran fine, just as fast as XP on the same system.
What did impress me about a week later was when I took that spare HD I used for vista and loaded OSX on it. Now that looked beautiful, ran fast, ran native OSX apps fine, and my conclusion from that week of OS experimentation was that if OSX ever made it to whitebox computers legally (let's not start this discussion again) it would knock Microsoft out of the water.
Let's face it, few home users will switch to Vista legally. Most will get it with a new computer. My school uses Windows 2000 and probably won't switch to even XP for a while. So go figure.
Check your facts please: the last thing people need is more FUD about what is and isn't DRM.
WinFS is not a separate filesystem. It uses NTFS as the filesystem, but then stores metadata on top of that (the same way other filesystems like HFS+ have for years).
You don't need to reform to WinFS, it's not a filesystem, but a relational database that carries metadata about existing files on an NTFS partition.
WinFS
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Take a look at http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1063 56
.NET objects.
for more information.
Basically, it sounds like the files are stored at the low level as ntfs files, with a relational database wrapping around them, allowing you to treat them as
I am a sig. I wish I were a more creative sig, but I am not. I guess everyone has something to strive for.
There's a reason Vista took so long to develop and it wasn't the end user interface
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=1063 56
This interview talks about the difference between tagging and the WinFS system. Seems to boil down to a more structured relationship between tags, and the ability for multiple apps to use the same tags and tag relationships.
I am a sig. I wish I were a more creative sig, but I am not. I guess everyone has something to strive for.
As I understand it, WinFS is an overlay on top of NTFS, adding metadata, much like how VFAT is an overlay on FAT, adding long filename support.
Trivia bit: Before NT4, you couldn't install NT on an NTFS partition. FAT was the only way to go. The install WOULD immediately convert the partition to NTFS on first boot, but it wouldn't actually install as NTFS.
Really? Let's ask Tom Rizzo, shall we?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
WinFS is essentially an intelligent metadata layer. In Windows OS parlance, an executive subsystem that utilizes an existing NTFS volume. The idea is to extend the traditional data model for files/folders and scraps of metadata into object-oriented patterns that the entire system can use (and hopefully reuse). Sort of like an object manager for the filesystem.
It's more than a file indexer for a developer, but just that for the enduser. Right now, it seems Microsoft really just wants feedback on the API's. If any real innovation for endusers is going to come from this, Microsoft seems to hope developers will figure it out.
ext3 was essentially an add-on for ext2. Point being, some of the better improvements don't take reinventing everything.
Correction:
Yes, by default the NT installer program would create a FAT partition and then convert it to NTFS. That was the order set up in the installer app.
If, however, you formatted the drive first in another NT machine as NTFS, you could then install directly to the NTFS partition.
When Microsoft first introduced WinFS in 2003, the company said it would include a new synchronization engine that could index a host of disparate Windows files
In 2003? Jesus Christ!
I seem to remember that in 1994, Cairo was all the rage. Hell, it has been an idea since 1991. If I did not toss them out before I moved into my current house, I'd have scans of each individual article in Windows Magazine about Cairo from 1994, 1995, and 1997.
WinFS is not even close to being called "new."
It's hard to be too impressed. The AS/400 had this 20 years ago.
It does exist for Linux. It called Logical Volume Management (LVM).
One may or may not agree with the guys opinions (especially about his stance on non-technical issues), but the fact is that Hans Reiser is one of the top experts in the field of filesystems.
I for one would like to know what Hans has to say on this fs.
The filesystem is the package manager
It wasn't an "advance" new with the IBM AS/400. The AS/400 series inherited it from the relatively unpopular IBM System/38. The System/38 inherited it from the IBM Future Systems project done in the late '60s and early '70s but that IBM never quite managed to get quite ready enough to actually ship.
You can read more about it at the relevant Wikipedia article.
RTM = Release To Manufacturer.
Took me a while to find out. *sigh*
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say. - Will Duran