Comments on: Lookout for Outlook

By: Gregg

Gregg — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The difference, as I understand it, is that WinFS will act as a kind of data store. Your Word documents, Outlook email, all that stuff, will be kept in this store. You won’t need to worry about paths and filenames and traditional metadata; WinFS will manage all that, correlate it, sift through it. The key part of the post is where he’s talking about a kind of “outer join” through the filesystem.

At this point it really seems conceptual, since there’s the problem of no running WinFS code to see all this in action…

By: paul

paul — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Call me skeptical, but I don’t think I want all my documents stored in SQLServer (essentially, that’s what it will be, from my reading). There are ways to index data with storing in a database.

If all you need is to index your email, take a look at Zoe (www.zoe.nu).

By the time Longhorn gets here, count on better options being available.

By: Ryan Walker

Ryan Walker — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

By the time Longhorn gets here, count on dentures.

By: pete

pete — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know much about WinFS but from what I’ve heard it sounds similar to BeFS that the BeOS used. Any experts willing to compare the two?

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Paul: Its not really going to be storing your data in an SQL server, atleast not from the way I’ve been understanding it. You still have your NTFS sub-system, with a few improvements, which acts as your data store.

What WinFS will be is a layer above that. Its almost a semantic layer. Data will be organized into piles instead of folders, which is one thing I wasn’t really understanding. THe most simplest def. I’ve come across is that WinFS will do filesystems what ID3 tags have done for music. Makes everything completely searchable in a realistic way and makes organizing quite easier. Its supposed to put a human face on all of our data.

I could be wildly off base but thats what almost every thing I’ve read on it has said.

By: paul

paul — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This might be worth reading: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html#R10

The most important feature of Longhorn is replacement of the familiar DOS/Windows filesystem with an object database (W0). You will no longer copy files to a floppy or CD-ROM or attach them to an email, because there will be no files. Database records will be copied from one database to another, probably through a .NET server. Large organizations will have their own .NET servers, but everyone else will use one of Microsoft�s, a service for which you will pay a fee. The Longhorn filesystem will be based on the technology of a re-thought and expanded SQL Server database (the project coded Yukon) (W8). Obviously, SQL Server being so tightly integrated with the filesystem (W19) will have a negative impact on publishers of other database engines for Windows. Not strange then that market leaders Oracle and IBM are heavily pushing the Linux platform and barely mention their products run on Windows any more.

By: paul

paul — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

On the BeFS: The BeOS had many features that endeared it to its users. One of these was its filesystem (called BFS), which was fast, supported large (64-bit offset) volumes and files, had metadata journaling for garunteed filesystem integrity and fast startup, and supported extended attributes for files and directories. If the capabilities of BeFS were wanted, there's a driver for it here: http://befs-driver.sourceforge.net/about.php And the internals of it are/were documented here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1558604979/102-6536692-6569702?v=glance

By: cloudy, chance of sun breaks

cloudy, chance of sun breaks — Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

be careful what you ask for

John over at inluminent was wondering about the proposed benefits of Longhorn and WinFS, the datastore that is slated to…