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OreoCookie · Aug 30, 2005, 02:28 PM

Just a piece of info: Microsoft released a WinFS beta today!

I just wouldn't call it beta, though, because MS asks for comments, suggestions and feature requests by developers. A public beta is slated for summer/fall 2006.

I guess they are feeling the heat by Google and Apple … healthy competition is a good thing after all

__^^__ · Aug 30, 2005, 05:19 PM

MS should have took the BEOS filesystem.

OreoCookie · Aug 30, 2005, 05:40 PM

Apple hired Be's former FS engineers by the way …

__^^__ · Aug 30, 2005, 06:05 PM

I think that might suck big time for the former Be folks. I wonder if they were at Apple before Be?

Chuckit · Aug 30, 2005, 06:06 PM

You wonder if Be's engineers were at Apple before they were at Be? I don't think they were. Why does it matter?

__^^__ · Aug 30, 2005, 06:36 PM

Remember, when JLG left Apple there were a number of engineers who went with him. It just seems like a twisted bit of fate. Be was so close to being bought by Apple. I wonder if I OS X would have been as successful if Apple had bought Be. But then again, if that was to happen, Jobs probably would not have come back.

production_coordinator · Aug 30, 2005, 06:46 PM

Originally Posted by __^^__

Remember, when JLG left Apple there were a number of engineers who went with him. It just seems like a twisted bit of fate. Be was so close to being bought by Apple. I wonder if I OS X would have been as successful if Apple had bought Be. But then again, if that was to happen, Jobs probably would not have come back.

I saw JLG in person at Carnegie Mellon in 96 showing off the Be OS. It was amazing, but also had a handful of shortcomings. One of the major ones was multi user... it was only a single user OS. There were also many foundation level components that simply weren't ready for prime time.

production_coordinator · Aug 30, 2005, 06:48 PM

P.S. The main BeFS designer is now working at Apple.

__^^__ · Aug 30, 2005, 07:11 PM

I remember during the very end of Be's existence, I read an article talking about how Be was looking to license their technology for multi-media applications. I sent an email to Be inquiring about the practicability of using BeOS in embedded systems. I got a response from JLG asking for specifics of what I had in mind. A few days later, Be closed down.

TETENAL · Aug 30, 2005, 07:28 PM

So how is it?

__^^__ · Aug 30, 2005, 07:36 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

So how is it?

If you are asking about BeOS and embedded systems, I never found out. Be closed shop. Apparently Be was working with Sony on some type of device but that fell through.

TETENAL · Aug 30, 2005, 07:42 PM

No, actually I meant WinFS.

OreoCookie · Aug 30, 2005, 07:48 PM

I don't know, it was on heise.de, but you can download it only as a member of the MS dev net, and needless to say, I'm not a member

I was checking winsupersite, but there was no mention of it. I'm anxious to see what it's like and what Leopard has to measure up against.

msuper69 · Aug 30, 2005, 10:51 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

... I'm anxious to see what it's like and what Leopard has to measure up against.

You've got it backwards. WinFS has to measure up to Leopard.

budster101 · Aug 30, 2005, 10:58 PM

Exactly, where is VISTA again?... OS X has been out for a while now, and if they don't make it out by Leopard, they are toast.

__^^__ · Aug 30, 2005, 11:29 PM

Originally Posted by budster101

Exactly, where is VISTA again?... OS X has been out for a while now, and if they don't make it out by Leopard, they are toast.

Didn't Vista start out as LongHorn? Maybe MS thinks they can reset the clock by renaming a product.

OreoCookie · Aug 31, 2005, 05:40 AM

Vista is the name of the next Windows version, Longhorn was its code name. It will debut at the end of 2006. You can also find more here.

As WinFS is a lot more sophisticated than HFS+ & Spotlight, so it will be a challenge. If Leopard is scheduled the same way as Tiger, I'm not sure we'll see it before Vista. But even Tiger seems to hold its ground.

Horsepoo!!! · Aug 31, 2005, 08:09 AM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

Vista is the name of the next Windows version, Longhorn was its code name. It will debut at the end of 2006. You can also find more here.

As WinFS is a lot more sophisticated than HFS+ & Spotlight, so it will be a challenge. If Leopard is scheduled the same way as Tiger, I'm not sure we'll see it before Vista. But even Tiger seems to hold its ground.

I think it's fun. Between MS and Apple, MS often had the crappier implementation of any one thing...yet the general population didn't care. For once, they'll have the better implementation...but, as always, I don't think the general population will care either.

One will look at how Tiger does everything and then look at Vista's way of handling metadata searches and barely see any difference.

OreoCookie · Aug 31, 2005, 10:23 AM

True. Even Thurrot now comes around to admit that time and again. Although he claims that it was M$ inspiring Google and Apple to develop their own search technology, I would say, the point it moot. It was done before (the best implementation AFAIK was done by Be) so neither of them can claim the crown of being first. Nor does that matter.

All that matters is the implementation. And from the looks of it (I have to trust Thurrot's judgement here about Vista), it doesn't seem, M$ can do it a lot better. Only by the time Vista arrives, Leopard will be in the final stages of development I assume, so the real contender will be Leopard and not Tiger.

Nevertheless, WinFS is at least theoretically a lot more flexible than Spotlight, so I can only hope that this pushes Apple to implement something similar (let's dub it Spotlight Extreme for the moment

). This is probably not far-fetched, as the Be guys did exactly that in an earlier prototype of BeFS (also called BeFS). But I surmise it was too CPU-intensive back then (the first BeBox had a dual 66 MHz 603e, earlier prototypes were even slower). Now with Gigahertzes to spend on such things, I guess you can implement a database-like filesystem quite efficiently.

TETENAL · Sep 2, 2005, 10:21 AM

Any reports on how the file system is now?

Chris Grande · Sep 2, 2005, 10:24 AM

Paul Thurrott has a preview up: http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/winfs_preview.asp

budster101 · Sep 2, 2005, 10:29 AM

Conclusions
It's far too early to make any determination about the worth of WinFS. However, I do find it notable that Microsoft has been able to keep its active development--and the surprise Beta 1 release--secret. In a day and age when the software giant is repeatedly criticized for constant delivery delays, the release of WinFS Beta 1 is a pleasant about face. Let's hope Microsoft can continue to surprise us in such positive ways in the months ahead.

--Paul Thurrott
August 30, 2005

NOBODY CARES PAUL. That's why it's such a good kept secret you dweeb.

Relational File System? Is that like a Relational Database System?

OLE Anyone? Object Linking and Embedding?

MicroShate is on a shingle... everyone is going to Apple in droves, and they'd better come out with something cause people are slowly waking up and smelling the coffee made of anything but real coffee...

SMacTech · Sep 2, 2005, 10:47 AM

I thought I was in the wrong forum. What does this have to do with OS X ? : )

budster101 · Sep 2, 2005, 10:52 AM

It should be in the "Lounge".

OreoCookie · Sep 2, 2005, 12:56 PM

Originally Posted by SMacTech

I thought I was in the wrong forum. What does this have to do with OS X ? : )

I thought the discussion would head towards what Apple might add to its next revision of Spotlight etc. But ok, movin' to the Lounge …

mgehman · Sep 2, 2005, 10:35 PM

In reading this article and others on the web, WinFS is not scheduled to be released with Vista. It will be an add on released after the initial release. So God only knows when it will actually see the light of day. I seem to remember Longhorn was to be released in what 2001-2002. So even if their implementation is superior to what is available now, or even in Leopard, it probably won't be by the time "it" whatever "it" is at the moment it arrives.

budster101 · Sep 2, 2005, 10:56 PM

Originally Posted by __^^__

Didn't Vista start out as LongHorn? Maybe MS thinks they can reset the clock by renaming a product.

I'm sorry, I missed your post.

Yes, Longhorn is now called Vista...

Which by definition is:

A distant view or prospect, especially one seen through an opening, as between rows of buildings or trees.

Stogieman · Sep 3, 2005, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

As WinFS is a lot more sophisticated than HFS+ & Spotlight, so it will be a challenge. If Leopard is scheduled the same way as Tiger, I'm not sure we'll see it before Vista. But even Tiger seems to hold its ground.

How is WinFS more sophisticated than HFS+ & Spolight? I have heard this mentioned before but no one ever gives a reason why.

budster101 · Sep 3, 2005, 12:33 PM

Because it is crap. Vaporcrap at that...

OreoCookie · Sep 4, 2005, 01:13 AM

Originally Posted by Stogieman

How is WinFS more sophisticated than HFS+ & Spolight? I have heard this mentioned before but no one ever gives a reason why.

WinFFS is a relational database based on SQL which is inherently a lot more powerful than Spotlight. The structure is very much independent of the actual location of objects (network, different drives).

budster101 · Sep 4, 2005, 01:38 AM

Relational Databases have been around since before Netscape.

Chuckit · Sep 4, 2005, 03:59 AM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

WinFFS is a relational database based on SQL which is inherently a lot more powerful than Spotlight.

Isn't that the exact same thing as Spotlight?

footar · Sep 4, 2005, 02:21 PM

WinFFS is a relational database based on SQL which is inherently a lot more powerful than Spotlight.

Isn't that the exact same thing as Spotlight?

No.

I don't have a machine running Vista, but I can explain what a file system is, what Spotlight is and what a relational DBMS is.

A file system is nothing more than a means of associating a name with a block of data. The first file systems were nothing more than a list of names. Now we've added directories and symbolic links, but all those do is allow you to use more clever naming schemes.

There are other things you can do, like have better strategies for recovery from errors (so-called transactional file systems) and such, but the basic idea is always the same: a file has a name.

And, yes, you can have metadata. Now instead of each file having a simple name, it's got a name with a few extra details.

Spotlight: It indexes files. It gives you the ability to perform queries against your filesystem. Now you can look at the file contents, to a limited degree, and you can even save those queries.

But nothing changes with Spotlight because of what it doesn't do and what it can't do:

A relational database management system let's you do several key things:

1. It let's you describe your data with predicates, that is, each "table" is a set of true propositions that all have the same predicate. Your data, instead of being chunks of binary, is now a set of logically grouped true statements about the real world.

2. Once you've described the logical model, the DBMS guarantees that the constraints you've set are always true.

3. It separates the logical meaning from the physical representation. This can be as simple as choosing one binary representation over another or as complex as reorganizing the structure of the tables behind the scenes.

4. It allows different applications to have a view of the data that is tailored to their needs.

All these properties allow an RDBMS one massive advantage over a file system: the ability to derive new true statements about the world.

An SQL DBMS can do some of these things but not all because SQL isn't proprely relational, and also because SQL does a lot of things that are just ass-backwards. For example, SQL doesn't really allow #2 because its constraint system is very weak, it doesn't allow #3 much at all and it doesn't allow #4 because SQL VIEWS are rarely updatable.

To be fair to SQL, it does allow you to derive new truths as an RDBMS does; it just has many arbitrary limits on it.

Personally, I suspect Apple's strategy of simply offering a SQL engine to developers will be just as useful as MS's grand scheme of integrating the two.

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2005, 04:59 AM

Originally Posted by budster101

Relational Databases have been around since before Netscape.

Yes, but except for the first BeFS (not the one which actually shipped) nobody implemented a filesystem based on a database. Neither part is new, but the combination is.

I think footar made an excellent post on what a relational database is. Just some additions: to that: with a relational database, you can not just add `arbitrary' information to a file, you can relate several files (e. g. all files of project X, attachment of mail Y, etc.).

__^^__ · Sep 5, 2005, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by OreoCookie

WinFFS is a relational database based on SQL which is inherently a lot more powerful than Spotlight.

Great, so now we will have worms infecting filesystems..

budster101 · Sep 5, 2005, 01:21 PM

That is what relational means right?.. You can relate several files. R-Base was one that I used to own.

Now worms can infect related files... uhm.

OreoCookie · Sep 5, 2005, 06:44 PM

Originally Posted by __^^__

Great, so now we will have worms infecting filesystems..

Eeeeeh, what?