Now that Visual Studio 2005 is out the door and the .NET Framework 2.0 has been released, Microsoft has issued an updated build of WinFS Beta 1 to MSDN subscribers. WinFS is Microsoft’s new SQL-based file system technology that is slated for release as an add-on shortly after Windows Vista.
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Now that Visual Studio 2005 is out the door and the .NET Framework 2.0
has been released, Microsoft has issued an updated build of WinFS Beta
1 to MSDN subscribers. WinFS is Microsoft’s new SQL-based file system
technology that is slated for release as an add-on shortly after
Windows Vista.
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Gee. This is interesting. NOT. Hey Thom, why the hype over a filesystem that’s been designed by Microsoft to cause problems with virtually every other filesystem being used?
Reminds me of good old BeFS with live queries
Seriously: I wonder how many users are actually going to use SQL queries for searching files ? For me it’s similar to the multimedia keyboards: I know many people that have it, but they never use their full capabilities.
Then there are some of us who saw internet/multimedia keyboards a waste of time and could never understand why the plebs out there like the rubbish anyway – then again, these are the same people who think that its sexy that their computer speakers hang off their side of their monitor like giant ears.
Anyway, its going to be interesting to see how it is integrated into applications – the simple fact of the matter is, Spotlight/Coredata and WinFS go alot further than Life queries ever did; its a complete API that allows extensive database capabilities to application developers – rather than them going out and trying to create some weird ass format that no one has ever heard of, it’ll simply be a matter of using the Coredata/Spotlight or WinFS API and create that a storage mechanism that is not only fast but accessible not only to their own application (obviously!) but to third party’s as well – the ability to search emails from your word processor for one thing; having one centralised address book that is accessible to all applications rather than having a a seperate address book for each application.
These are moves that are similar but at the same time different to what has been on offer in the past – the provide the same sort of feature set, but they extend their use alot further than simply have a dinky dialogue box and the ability to search the disk on the fly.
There are so many uses for this, for example instead of having itunes using its own database engine, and then having outlook client using it own database engine and then having rss bandit use its own database engine for storing information you could just have one?
Why have 3 applications loading there own engines into memory and using CPU when you don’t need to?
Why have 3 applications storing your data in weird and inaccessible formats?
They are actually doing this in Vista, w/o WinFS. Check out how Vista stores contact information, e-mails from OE, etc… Should be quite interesting.
But not nearly as breathtaking as MS makes it out to be.
Searching through the disk by browsing a folder structure seems just alien to me, but this could simply be because I am SO used to the traditional way.
Who cares of WinFS
Beagle is better and now with nautilus integration
even better.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/62853542@N00/70103245/
NTFS needs to be replaced, I hate having to still defrag it. Why does it pick up & move the data it reads?
IIRC, NTFS doesnt move data it reads but just blobs data where ever there is space on the disk, this is all good until you delete a file or un-install an app which leaves a space, then the data gets splattered all over the place into what ever space it will fit into
Since WinFS will work on top of NTFS, and having changed NTFS from win2k to XP and 2k3, I would guess the NTFS version in Vista will also have it’s changes and be new here and there.
Maybe they’ve worked out the fragmenting problems. Any FS will fragment if given enough time, and you do enough installing/deleteing of files and so on. Some just fragment faster then others.
But I’m sure they’re working on it, they’ve been re-writing other parts of the OS, why not make more changes to NTFS?
i have always wondered about this, but isn’t the windows registry also old? Couldn’t they come up with a replacement for it?
broken_symlink : i have always wondered about this, but isn’t the windows registry also old? Couldn’t they come up with a replacement for it?
Curious: what do you think could replace it? and what exactly is the problem with the registry?
> Curious: what do you think could replace it? and what
> exactly is the problem with the registry?
Well, just about anything would be an improvement.
How about .ini files!
The registry is huge (and always growing). If one byte becomes corrupt you cann’t run Windows.
But I don’t understand this one at all, I can’t see any benfits, (Not to say that there aint any, just I can’t see any) or even how it works. And for that alone I’d like to say good for MS for trying something new, and not just borrowing from elsewhere.
The registry although the basic idea was good, in execution is a desaster, the bookkeeping is too much for a single client workstation, the whole thing has become a datadump for thousands of keys where nobody really knows anymore if you can alter them.
Add to that the fact, that it basically is a constant source of corrupting your system if one part of it goes severely down.
Although the concept is old, and Windows had it before the registry desaster, textual config files are way better, less system corruptable and easier to maintain.
Windows never should have moved from config files to the registry.