What happened to WinFS?

[Coup27]

From what I read it was supposed to be ready for Vista, which we all know went south. The 7 was a major refinement of Vista so it's logical it didn't appear then either.

I've read that Windows 8 will also use NTFS so what happened to the long awaited sucessor to a 1993 file system?

 

[razel]

The market changed, people don't like Microsoft and with the current state of electronics, it's FAR too heavy for mobile devices. Luckily because of where computing for the public is going where we're having smaller specialized devices for media consumption, such an advanced generic file system becomes less important to the general public.

By the way, there's nothing wrong with NTFS. It's more than enough for what we do and too much for mobile devices which is where the money is at.

 

[Magic Carpet]

As far as I know, WinFS will make its way into Windows 8 Server. It's been "renamed" though.

Microsoft is building a new file system into Windows 8, according to reports.
The software giant has named the file system “Protogon” and references to it can be found in the latest leaked copies of Windows 8. Itworld discovered references to an “NT Protogon FS driver”, which appears to be a kernel mode driver for a new file system called Protogon. Mary Jo Foley did some further digging with Rafael Rivera and it appears that Protogon incorporates database-like concepts like transactions, cursors, rows and tables. Rivera says Protogon includes a string, which seems to indicate Protogon could replace or at least emulate NTFS file system.
Protogon sounds like Microsoft’s original concept of Windows Future Storage (WinFS). The codename (WinFS) originally made its way into Longhorn (Windows Vista) builds during the early beta phases. WinFS was first demonstrated in 2003 at the company’s Professional Developers Conference. Microsoft promised an advanced storage subsystem designed to manage data by means of a database. The WinFS database would allow any type of information to be stored in it alongside a defined schema for the data type. The idea was to speed up searching and data sharing between applications. Microsoft ditched the idea before Windows Vista was brought to market.
Windows 8 is expected to be released in 2012 and include a new tablet UI, cloud syncing abilities and enhanced sensor support.