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WinFS is Dead

blogs.msdn.com — The official word from the dev team is that WinFS will no longer be developed as a relational filesystem, and all future betas are cancelled.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 24, 2006

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  • Chewie67, on 10/12/2007, -15/+104This was THE ONLY thing that sounded good about Longhorn to me. Now that Vista won't have it, and it won't be released at a later date, there will be no Vista in my future. I'll stick with XP and maybe buy a Mac for my next PC. As long as there is BootCamp and Parallels, I can run OSX and just switch to XP when I need to run Visual Studio or any other non-Mac software.
  • macgabriel87, on 10/12/2007, -10/+78wow, i didnt expect this. did anyone expect this?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+70As opposed to Google, Yahoo, Oracle, IBM etc, who develop everything internally?

    It's typical "business".

    The actual article doesn't say WINFS is dead either, it says, "These changes do mean that we are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS", it's a direction change not a death knoll.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -7/+54Quite right.

    However, it's "death knell." A knoll is a hill.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -17/+55umm... what features?
    - eye candy?
    - loads of confirmation dialogs for any file operation?
    - resource hogging?
    - extremely confusing network connection module?
    - insanely crippled windows mobile device center?

    I couldn't stand Vista for more than 4 days, given the fact that I was pretty determined to keep it for a year while installing it! Being negative about something is what I hate, but it was difficult to find A single extra feature that isn't present in XP.
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -4/+38Except that Microsoft and Universal are incompatible words.

    Microsoft prides itself on proprietary standards and formats to keep people locked in. Don't expect this to ever change.
  • raingrove, on 10/12/2007, -4/+31I hope MS considers adopting Solaris ZFS just like how Mac OS, Linux and various other Unices are considering...
    I am sick of filesystem incompatibilities...
    One universal FS should be cool. (At least giving the choice of it.)
  • atomicpoet, on 10/12/2007, -9/+36I didn't expect it. I'm wondering, is this related to Bill Gates resignation as Chief Software Architect?
  • hyukhyuk, on 10/12/2007, -4/+30zcreem: a knell is the sound of a bell, esp. when rung solemnly for a death or funeral.
  • QuantumLo0p, on 10/12/2007, -5/+29I'll be a satisfied Windows user when Microsoft rewrites from the ground up, dumps the registry and uses an install/uninstall method like Apple uses.
  • Kakgak, on 10/12/2007, -9/+33A kneelling gnoll knells on the knoll?
  • Roger, on 10/12/2007, -5/+29"Hill of death"

    Has a nice knell to it.
  • EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -12/+34I have a small favor to ask: Will everybody who feels they must share with everybody how crappy they think Windows is please switch to another OS and stop complaining. Judging by what you read in the forums Windows gets worse with every version but OS X and Linux just keep getting better.

    If that is true there MUST be a better operating system for you by now. Of course the relative differences between the OSs don't seem to change much to me and I don't see people flocking to other operating systems so maybe you're just full of it.

    Constructive criticism is great. Mindless flaming, on the other hand, is not hip or cool--it's just lame.
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -14/+364 days? I'd be in a mental hospital. Vista lasted me all of a few hours. It's a POS.
  • troublemaker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21Nope. I actually thought that Microsoft would continue pushing WinFS as the new "next big thing", making it the de-facto standard of tomorrow.

    And yes, I'm serious: I'm really, really surprised.
  • cybernetic798, on 10/12/2007, -4/+25Yea the registry is a piece of *****. I hope that the only reason it is around right now is because of legacy code and not because they plan to stick with it...
  • lordsandwich, on 10/12/2007, -7/+26@r2d7: It's not a direction change no matter how much spin the blog puts on it. WinFS was conceived as a filesystem (hence the name) and now they're abandoning the project and canvassing it for parts.

    As an analogy, if MS decided to stop development on Vista and instead backport many of its features into XP, then Vista would by all rights be dead.
  • NSResponder, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21It's a management problem.

    -jcr
  • EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -6/+24foolfromhell wrote: "Vista wont allow anyone to play cracked games or use cracked software. Aero is not worth it."

    Being as people playing cracked games likely did not pay for their OS either I doubt Microsoft cares. How can something be "not worth it" when you're not going to pay for it anyway? *shakes head*
  • Ryuuzaki, on 10/12/2007, -8/+25I'm satisfied already; I don't use Windows.

    Why do you have to wait for windows to be decent, when you can just use something else?
  • chicken101, on 10/12/2007, -7/+24I swear, Microsoft never finishes anything it starts. Why spend millions of dollars over 5 years on WinFS, then say it will not be on Vista but on Blackcomb, and then say that we abandoned it? For the love of God, MS has some of the smartest programmers around, why can't they finish anything!!!!
  • 1010011010, on 10/12/2007, -2/+18Apparently WinFS has been reduced to "the next version of ADO.NET", plus some additions to SQL Server.

    http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=207909


    From, the WinFS blog: "With most of our effort now working towards productizing mature aspects of the WinFS project into SQL and ADO.NET, we do not need to deliver a separate WinFS offering."
  • jrsims, on 10/12/2007, -4/+18Sun's ZFS is the last word in filesystems. Who cares about WinFS? It would always be less than ZFS.
  • raid517, on 10/12/2007, -7/+21There is a general level of agreement I think that Vista is a POS... but I'm persisting with it, as I'm hoping it will get better. However after finding something like 47 separate faults, bugs and unbearable inconsistencies with it (and reporting them all) in the two weeks I have been using it, I can't imagine how it will be possible to fix everything that needs fixing before their stated shipping date in January/February 2007. (I wouldn't even class it as being in an alpha state ATM). No doubt however that MS will simply do as they always do and will push it out the door long before it is actually finished. Companies generally say that they don't upgrade until the first service pack (with good reason) so how about MS don't release this Windows version until the first service pack - or in other words until they have squished the majority of bugs in it?

    As for WINFS - it really does seem as though they are just accentuating the positive. Wherever the things they learned through WINFS are going to be farmed out to, it's clear that it really isn't going to be going into Vista any time soon. Which is a shame, because the old style indexing service they have 'borrowed' and shoehorned into Vista from MSN desktop search is a crude, almost stone age resource hogging hack by comparison.

    But anyway, I guess I will do my best and keep using it. I couldn't live with myself if I blamed them later for not fixing something that I found and didn't tell them about. If they don't fix them after I tell them about them, well hey at least my own conscience is clear. But currently Vista is so bad, that I almost feel sorry for them.
  • MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -4/+17the sound of a bell rung slowly to announce a death or a funeral or the end of something.

    Edit: damn, beat me to it.
  • Shadowlaw, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14It always surprises me how Be Inc. could develop a filesystem similar to WinFS called BeFS ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeFS ) and they actually finished it in 1996!! That is 10 years ago people, and Be Inc. could not even compare a bit to Microsoft's manpower and money put into WinFS. BeFS contained a relational database which allowed you to use your own attribute/value pairs on files (these days they call it tagging in the web2.0 world). Most of all, BeFS was lightning fast and it actually worked. So respect to them, and hopefully Microsoft gets this done somewhere in the next 10 years then :)
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13that would've been a proper statement 4 years ago. Not in today's world with Tiger and Ubuntu ;)
  • Herolint, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15@Roger

    It IS better to save a hundred configuration files rather than a registry as Microsoft implemented it. That way, you don't have one giant registry sitting their taking up resources just to play solitare. With small configuration files, you only open the configurations for the programs you are running. It is also easier to get rid of a configuration file than it is to delete application specific data from the registry. You can never get it all.

    The registry is just a dark pit that Microsoft and programmers use (poorly mind you) to store crap. One problem with it is that there is no mechanism in it to link entries to each other and then remove ALL entries in the registry when you uninstall a program so the cruft always builds up in it. The biggest problem with it, in my mind, is that you can put almost anything into it and a lot of crap-eating developers do just that. It's really stupid.
  • Zippo, on 10/12/2007, -10/+20Oh well, all the more reason to get a Mac and use HFS+
  • jwoelich, on 10/12/2007, -4/+14Yes, they do, but this was just another attempt at Microsoft playing catch-up.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12redxii! do I have to specifically mention that just 1 out of the 5 annoyances (a tiny part of the entire list) was GUI based? It's all about how effectively you can use the computer. And yea, the reason that I kept dragging myself to use it for 4 days was that I DIDN'T want to base my decision just on GUI. I wanted to check the details!

    Roger! Yes, the decision is based on a BETA release. But it's worth noting that it's BETA2. If we forget Longhorn development time before 2003, it has still been about 3 years of Vista development and just 6 months out of 4 years allotted to vista development remain to improve upon this BETA2.

    Given the wealth of good programmers MSFT has, it's a surprise/disappointment that all they did in past 3 years was put up that small list, which falls way short of the expectations/promises. And if you notice carefully, most of the entries are just renamed utilities already present in XP. IMHO, Vista just felt like XP SP3 and nothing more than that! And for some parts, eg. network connections, they have terribly screwed up the almost perfect usability in XP.

    So, as it stands for me, it's highly unlikely that there'll be a major overhaul in Vista's usability in the next 6 months. Which leaves Ubuntu and XP for me in the future PC and a Mac ;).
  • EtherGnat, on 10/12/2007, -8/+17Where are all these mythical people who switch? Everybody claims to be switching, yet somehow the percentage of Linux and Mac users never seems to grow significantly. Either people are lying about switching or there are just as many people silently slinking back to Windows with their tail between their legs.

    Don't get me wrong--there are some great advantages to alternative operating systems. I honestly would love to see more people switch and provide more competition to Microsoft. Unfortunately reality never seems to reflect the alternative universe of forums.
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11@Roger

    I disagree. I find them both extremely annoying.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -12/+21
    1) Welcome to the 1970's.... UNIX(and Linux/MacOSX) has worked like this forever.

    2) Nice job copying all the work that everyone did for Linux 2.6 and that BSD just got done doing....to develop more advanced modes of kernel scheduling.

    3) It's called zero-copy networking... UNIX/Linux/BSD have had this forever and a day.

    4) Your right it has been done already...and I bet that MacOSX's spotlight will still eat anything MS comes up with for lunch.

    5) WOW! A modular OS install capability...welcome to Linux/BSD. I bet you still can't leave the GUI out during the install.

    6) Usermode drivers has been the focus of Linux for years now.

    7) YAWN...Flash=IDE...it doesnt even take a driver to use them. I run SLAX all the time from a flash drive.




    .....seriously...is that ALL you can come up with?


    That would make Vista at BEST just an attempt to bring windows up to date with a few of the features available in most other os's for a long time now.


    Lame++++++++


  • pumacub, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Just because "WinFS" is dead does not mean the technology behind it is...

    I bet most of the functionality inherent in WinFS will be part of the next ADO.NET and LINQ.

    Remember, WinFS sat on top of NTFS, it was not a replacement.
  • MrObjectional, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@ethergnat: Just because I crack games in order to not carry the discs around with my laptop doesn't mean I'm liable to pirate windows. Comparing using a crack to pirating anything (especially an entire OS) is foolish, as there are many upstanding (though technically illegal) uses of modifications to bypass antiquated protection systems.
  • bariswheel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"Sun's ZFS is the last word in filesystems."

    I wouldn't be so quick on making that statement.

    http://www.namesys.com/ and click on benchmarks. I'll let the numbers speak for themselves.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_file_systems
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reiser4
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS
  • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -8/+16[quote]wow, i didnt expect this. did anyone expect this?[/quote]

    I expect Vista to be cancelled too.
  • Wiggles2, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12"Vista wont allow anyone to play cracked games or use cracked software."

    Why? And why would it not be able to be overcome by the ingenuity of the cracking community?

    (I'm serious about asking why, not just trying to make a point. I'd really like to know cause I haven't heard this)
  • ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18First off, I'm sorry to hear that WinFS will not be released as a stand alone feature of Windows. The demos I saw of what Microsoft wanted to do with WinFS were incredibly impressive and innovative. But Microsoft is probably doing the right thing here and listening to what customers are demanding. A lot of the best stuff in WinFS will still see the light of day in various other components of .NET and SQL Server.

    Now, as far as a lot of you saying that the loss of WinFS means that there is no reason to upgrade to Vista, give me a break.

    First of all WinFS was removed from Vista months ago. Second, and most importantly, Vista is a *major* upgrade over WinXP. Even if you completely ignore WPF, Aero, and the new WDDM there are a LOT of new features that are going to dramatically improve computing for Windows users. Here are just a few of the biggies:

    1.) UAC - Despite the negative press of the betas, user account control will make computing FAR safer for Windows users. UAC is not just the security prompts people have been so bemoaning (and that have been dramatically reduced in post beta 2, btw), it's also a LOT of internal stuff to make sure that applications that wouldn't normally function correctly running as non-admin work just fine. This, coupled with making all users standard users by default, will make Windows far more secure for "free" while preserving nearly all the required backwards compatibility with previous versions. This is a huge step and would be reason enough alone to upgrade.

    2.) Kernel Scheduler Changes - Microsoft has introduced a fairly novel concept into their kernel scheduler that will make Windows "feel" far more response and will allow for truly glitch free playback of intensive media streams like HD video. The gist of it is that processes can request a minimum amount of CPU time regardless of what the machine is doing. If possible, Windows will make sure that even if you're machine is extremely busy the applications that requested that CPU time will get it. Now, it's obviously a lot more complex than that, but the end result will be a more responsive OS and is a much better media platform as well.

    3.) New TCP network stack - the TCP stack has been completely rewritten for Vista. It includes new technology that can *dramatically* increase bandwidth utilization for both desktop and server situations. It especially benefits long distance, high bandwidth connections... meaning connections that have high latency but a very large pipe. 400%+ increases in speeds have been *common* during testing.

    4.) Fully integrated search - Yes, this has been available on Windows and other platforms for quite a while as add-ons (or built in, like MacOS), but the full integration, alone with the developer extensibility that comes along with it, will be a great feature. After using Vista betas for the past few months it's *really* hard to go back to XP because of the lack of this feature alone.

    5.) Modular SKUs - it may seem a little abstract, but the benefits to the end users of the far more modular design of Vista will be dramatic. The ability to add major features (like Tablet features, or Media Center Features) by simply clicking a button will be great. Not to mention the fact that it will dramatically decrease the amount of time it takes Microsoft to create security patches thanks to the fact that isolation of the effects of the changes will be easier to see.

    6.) User-mode driver push: User-mode drivers will become far more common in Vista than in XP. It's possible to create user-mode drivers in XP, but it's not trivial. Microsoft has gone a LONG way in making this a far less difficult task and the end result will be that nearly all non-performance critical drivers will be user-mode. What does this mean? Since nearly all Windows crashes are a result of poorly written drivers, there will be a huge decrease in crashes that take down the machine.

    7.) Flash-based caching features - Vista includes support for both hybrid hard drives and the ability to use external flash disks (usb drives, compact flash, etc.) as caching locations for frequently access files. Since, by FAR, the slowest thing in your computer is your hard drive this will make Vista machines far more zippy than the same machine running XP.

    Ok, I'm tired of writing. This was all off the top of my head so I'm sure I miss a lot of cool features.
  • jwoelich, on 10/12/2007, -7/+15Different options don't create bloat, Mr. MS Fanboy. They don't *have* to be used just because the option exists to utilize them, so no "bloat" is added. It would be nice if someday Microsoft would figure that out instead of coming across with broad sweeping decisions on what's best for everybody, then falling flat on their face when they are wrong. But wait, that's why it's great that a new OS requires 8+ gigs of space on a HD yet provides marginal functionality improvements to XP. *That* is called bloat, assboy.
  • sishgupta, on 10/12/2007, -20/+28I used to be an MS fanboy...but i can't take it any longer.

    I am naming MS officially "dead to me".....now.
  • acc355, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"Erm, has anyone developed a similar FS? I don't know that there's anyone out there for them to buy."

    Reiser4 perhaps... good luck buying that though. ;)
  • mcarolan, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11erm, what else has changed apart from the UI then? Windows Vista == Windows XP Service Pack 3
  • Shadowlaw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Indeed, a fine example of great technology go to waste, like so many others have before. Bad management of Be Inc. (if you could blame them, given Microsoft's surpeme dominance at the time) is however not an excuse for Microsoft for not being able to build a more advanced version of something that was available 10 years ago....
  • OBKenobi, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10[quote]Oh please diggmaddy. You're making your judgements based on a BETA release.[/quote]

    Yes, and for a beta release, Vista is in terrible condition! They're going to need another beta, or several "RC" releases.

    Vista is going to be delayed again, watch.

    Unless ofcourse MS chooses to F over all its customers and released an unfinished OS yet again.

    Service packs... service packs... service packs...
  • raid517, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9"Constructive criticism is great. Mindless flaming, on the other hand, is not hip or cool--it's just lame."

    At least I'm working hard to find issues and to report them, so that there is at least a chance devotees such as yourself might have an easier time of it when Vista finally is released. Since when did genuine beta testing/ bug hunting become unconstructive?

    Exactly how many bugs have you found and reported since you started using Vista? (That is of course if you are even using it).

    Believe it or not I would love to see a genuinely good Windows release - specifically because a) I have a vested interest in that my job will probably at some point involve working with it (whether I like the idea or not) so making it easier to use will make my life easier too, b) I have family members who will inisist on using it for the latest gaming support (so again I'm tied into it) and c) because regardless of who makes it, I'm a geek and I I care about good software and about making it the best that it is possible for it to be.

    Maybe you need to stop looking at the eye candy, and the pretty spinning 3D windows and get your hands dirty and look at what's underneath and really try using the OS?

    It is nothing short of astonishing that this is as far as MS has come in 6 years. After this long most people expected so much more - instead of which we are being presented with something that to all intents and purposes appears to be nothing more than Windows XP in drag. (Yes I know about all of the security stuff they have done (boy do I know!) but underneath fundamentally hardly anything has changed - except that they have made the interface perhaps at least 50% harder to use.

    In any case I have used it and I continue to use it and if I were you I would be grateful that there are people like me around, because it is due to my willingness to find bugs and to criticize that you will probably be able to maintain your fanboy love affair with MS products long after the initial version of Vista is released.
  • KCorax, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11@Chewie57 If you indeed run Visual Studio then you understand that Vista has a lot more to offer besides WinFS. Integration with the searching services and cached search folders do the exact same things. Plus now you can treat all filesystem collections as tables and process them with the Linq sql-like language that comes with Visual Studio Orcas.
  • ThinkFr33ly, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13In fact, WinFS was a *significantly* more advanced version of what BeOS had.

    Add to that the fact that WinFS would have been including in the world's most used operating system, meaning that it had a wide variety of restrictions placed on it that didn't apply to BeOS, and it's actually pretty easy to see why WinFS is taking so long (or perhaps has been cut.)

    Here is a pretty good discussion about it: http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.51097.20

    Here is a relevant quote:

    "1. Be Inc used to have a full database filesystem (as Microsoft's WinFS is supposed to be) but the resulting performance was abysmal. As in "Look, I'm creating a file, -whir- -whir- yup, there we go".

    2. So BeFS just uses extended attributes (effectively inodes point to both a data and a metadata stream) and an old speed-up (large inodes, so you don't need a block read to get the first few hundred bytes of data).

    3. BeOS also uses hidden files containing a B Tree index for the attribute fields. This allows some simple query speed-ups e.g. find all the MIME:image/jpeg files, assuming that the relevant attribute exists and was indexed in advance.

    4. The resulting performance still isn't very good (comparisons are given for various 1990s filesystems, they all kick sand in Be's face) but it's more tolerable than the WinFS-like database.

    Anyone who has used UNIX "locate" and SGI's XFS has seen all the tricks used in BeOS. That's how exciting and modern it all is. The main advantage (if you can call it that) Be Inc had was that with a clean slate they could insist that all software written for their OS should use, create and update various attributes.

    Let me make this 100% plain: If tomorrow you wanted to make a Linux distro that had all the "cool" live query features etc. from BeOS there would be no technical obstacle, you just need a lot of money to get applications (re-)written. That's what stopped Be Inc, and it would stop you too.

    IF Microsoft are able to fix the performance problems in WinFS it will be much more powerful than BeFS and BeOS indices. However I doubt that it's practical, and so I expect the WinFS name will eventually be assigned to something that's basically still NTFS, but tied to a lot of metadata search technology aimed at people who can't find their photos, spreadsheetc etc."
  • pabster, on 10/12/2007, -5/+12@Ryuzzaki

    Um, maybe because some people HAVE to use Windows to run their applications? (GASP)

    Not everyone has the liberty of just saying "***** it, install Linux!"
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