WinFS is back Vista News Discuss WinFS is back in the Windows Vista forums; A year ago, Microsoft announced that the next-generation Windows File System (WinFS) would not be included in the first version of Longhorn (which, we now know will be called ...

[VistaNewsMan]

A year ago, Microsoft announced that the next-generation Windows File System (WinFS) would not be included in the first version of Longhorn (which, we now know will be called Vista).

The original plan was that a first beta of WinFS would be released around the same time as the retail version of V...

Link To Original Article

[Snuffy]

In spite of everything discussed there WinFS Beta 1 already delivered much of the things promised. If you have an access to MSDN Subscriptions you may download WinFS Beta 1 TR bits and try them with Windows XP. WinFS works perfectly well.

However there are some problems with WinFS as the product.

The first problem is that while Avalon changed presentation model in a little (say you can still use Win Forms and even Win32 apps in Windows Vista) WinFS would change the data layer and data access dramatically.

[Znod]

Originally Posted by VistaNewsMan

A year ago, Microsoft announced that the next-generation Windows File System (WinFS) would not be included in the first version of Longhorn (which, we now know will be called Vista).

The original plan was that a first beta of WinFS would be released around the same time as the retail version of V...

Link To Original Article

Hey, we now have a newsman/identified moderator. Welcome to the jobs--whoever you used to be with about 150 posts. Who were you in you last Vista Babble incarnation? Thanks for the info.

[Snuffy]

Also I can't say anymore about WinFS at this point Microsoft Chairman Bill
Gates already told to the general public in Moscow that WinFS project is back
on track and it would be used in the whole number of Microsoft products.
--
Danila A. Kornev
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.crn.com/sections/breaking...leId=196600671

At the Windows Vista business launch Thursday in New York, Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer acknowledged that the Redmond, Wash., company bit off more
than it could chew when it promised WinFS for Vista. And even though that was
cut from Vista, Microsoft continues to work on the system for a future version
of Windows, he said.

---------- Reply -- Dec 16 2006 - --------------------------------------

Hello, -snip-

As far as I can say you WinFS is not a whole file system as far as we all
determine the file system term. WinFS is a relational file system (as it is
positioned) but it doesn't mean that you can get the hard disk drive and
format it in WinFS. No. Instead WinFS uses NTFS as underlying platform and
reuses SQL Server 2005 functionality with CLR integrated into it that
provides us UDTs as .NET classes. All the data stored in WinFS must be one of
the types either described in the assemblies installed with WinFS (.NET
classes as UDTs are described as XML schemas and stored in assemblies) or in
3rd party assemblies provided by other companies as well. That means that
anything stored in WinFS is a special class and so all the data is structured
one. All data is stored in SQL Server and NTFS. Why so? The problem is that
SQL Server provides an opportunity to save data that is simple to search for
and retrieve from server. But there are some kinds of data that can't be
recognized and stored in SQL Server like media files. Say you can store some
data about media file and then perform a search against it but it is not
possible to search for the media part (sound or sound composition) using text
search - there is no such mechanism to describe sound in text. Instead you
can store some data about this sound (or any other type of media file) and
this "data about data" is called metadata. Metadata already exists that mean
that you can store some information about tracks (MP3 tags) or documents
(Word Documents Properties like Author, Comments, and Revision etc.). The
second problem is that not any file has metadata in its format. Say you can
add metadata to Photoshop media file but there is no way to add some data for
text documents in txt format. WinFS brings a standard way to describe data
items of different types (Contacts, Documents and so on) and a standard way
for storing and adding metadata for them. In fact WinFS stores anything that
can be used in search in it while the data that can't be retrieved by
particular search (say you can't query for the sound track itself, instead
you can query for its name etc.) is stored in NTFS. WinFS brings the
opportunity to work with data as with OOP objects (.NET classes) that makes
data management even more powerful than it is available as of now. After
WinFS installation you'll notice some changes - you'll find some new shell
namespace extensions that would be stored in My Computer folder. They will
provide you an access to data stored in WinFS in a simple way. Say extension
for Contacts would be "Personal Contacts" extension in My Computer, for
Documents - "Documents", for videos and pictures - "Pictures & Videos" you've
got the idea. There are some ways to retrieve similar types of data from the
file system itself by using such mechanisms as Windows Desktop Search but
they are not such powerful as WinFS. The difference is that while WinFS
stores data (say files) in it itself tools like Windows Desktop Search (and
Windows Search in Windows Vista) index existing files stored in the
particular file system (NTFS) and the actuality of the search very hard
depends on the period of re-indexing time. WinFS performs the search across
the data itself against those tools that search against the indexed image of
actual data. This is the very big difference between traditional file search
utilities and WinFS.
Also WinFS provides a powerful mechanism of relationships between different
data stored in it. First of all it is very important to understand that WinFS
presents the new abstraction for data management named Item. Anything in the
world that can be described in text terms derives from Item. Say apple is
type of fruit and fruit is type of Item etc. So WinFS makes it easy to relate
different types of data like Documents and Contacts. You can relate them by
themselves (say Document.RelatedContacts retrieves you the collection of
related contacts) or relate by their properties (say Document.RelatedContacts
retrieves you the collection of the contacts if the Document property Author
contains the names of those contacts). This features a new way of interacting
with data. Say you are going to find someone in your Personal Contacts
folder. You’ve found it (simply by listing the whole collection of contacts
stored in your machine, or by input of a number of filters) and now you will
be able to query for related items like Documents (this contact sent you),
Media items (this contact listen to), Emails (this contact sent you) and so
on. You will click on of the Documents related to this contact and the
appreciate application starts and opens this document. WinFS doesn’t know
what that application is instead the WinFS storage watcher does all that work
and runs the related application.
Also WinFS provides such great features like synchronization between
different data silos to it. All these features makes WinFS the best way to
store and manage data in your computer.

--
Danila A. Kornev [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.


No, I am not the VistaNewsMan.. Just figured I should continue with his post..

& currently I am looking for a copy of WinFS that works in WinXP or Vista

[felix8406]

I had tried to get info on Fiji, but the information that I’ve seen so far is kind of sketchy. For what I gathered, Fiji or Vista R2, in my opinion, is an update to Vista, similar to what Win 98 SE was for Win 98. Fiji will include the new Windows File System or WinFS, a better and more useful sidebar, built-in playback of HD-DVD as well as other enhancement to Vista. Fiji is schedule to be released sometime in 2008.