WinFS?

[Bling]

Who here has taken a look at Microsoft's new file system WinFS? Thoughts?

 

[EeyoreX]

Does it really matter? IIRC WinFS will not be fully implemented until well after Longhorn is supposed to ship. Other than that, I suppose the idea of easily finding anything anywhere is a good one. We shall see. In about 2009.

\Dan

 

[Sianath]

The dev talk on WinFS was interesting... not that I can say much.

 

[Nothinman]

Who here has taken a look at Microsoft's new file system WinFS? Thoughts?

Last I heard the WinFS filesystem was dumped in favor of a database/indexing service on top of NTFS that would still be confusingly called WinFS.

 

[spyordie007]

Nope, WinFS was never "dumped" it's evolved considerably since it's conception but it isnt going anywhere. WinFS is one of the cornerstones of the longhorn platform:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/Longhorn/understanding/pillars/WinFS/default.aspx

 

[Nothinman]

I'm not sure if evolved is the right term, originally I thought it was supposed to be a NTFS replacement filesystem and now it's a layer on top of NTFS, whether it was the evolution of the project or the project manager deciding they didn't have time to create a whole new filesystem is unknown since MS development decisions are made behind closed doors. Sure it's more than just an indexing service, but it still sits on top of NTFS and uses NTFS filestreams and handles for the data backend, they're just adding more attributes and ways to query them.

 

[TonyRic]

Nothingman, in otherwords, they are adding more bloat. LOL Typical MS.

 

[Nothinman]

Call it what you will but I know a lot of people who can't manage files in a normal filesystem for sh!t and would really benefit from this. I doubt I'll ever run Longhorn or use WinFS, but if something similar came up for Gnome (and I think something is in the works) I'll probably leave it enabled for the off times that I have problems finding things. And anyway by the time it's released the people who get Longhorn will have fast enough machines they won't care much, just like they don't care about all the sh!t MS added in XP now

 

[Sianath]

Stupid NDA. Suffice it to say it wont slow down your machine in any way you'll notice.

 

[spyordie007]

even NDA aside; anyone who runs a modern DB server knows how long most "normal" select statements take to run...

 

[Nothinman]

Stupid NDA. Suffice it to say it wont slow down your machine in any way you'll notice.

A) This is why I like Open Source so much, no NDAs so that the real information can be posted
B) From the beta shots I saw (I realize things probably have changed by now) showed the WinFS service using several hundred megs of memory so if they want no appreciable slowdown they have their work cut out for them.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
even NDA aside; anyone who runs a modern DB server knows how long most "normal" select statements take to run...

Not if you do the keys right Consider that a file table is random. You normal display files in alpha order. If you create a key on file name, sort and store, a display of a volume could be faster. There would be some background, but the background would monitor change and update the keys.

No, it could be faster, but use a little more room creating a directory of the files along with associated information. Detail view of my drive might snap in! Wow.

 

[stash]

B) From the beta shots I saw (I realize things probably have changed by now) showed the WinFS service using several hundred megs of memory so if they want no appreciable slowdown they have their work cut out for them.

It's not in beta, it's in alpha. Optimization of the code is not exactly a priority when you're working on an alpha.

 

[spyordie007]

I think we're both saying the same thing gsellis; that the select statements should be quick and wont pose a problem. (my answer wasnt sarcastic, anyone who runs a serious DB server knows that normal select queries generally happen very quickly).

From the beta shots I saw (I realize things probably have changed by now) showed the WinFS service using several hundred megs of memory so if they want no appreciable slowdown they have their work cut out for them.

what do you expect from a pre-alpha database engine? I'm sure it's efficiency, speed and memory usage will improve dramatically by the time it's actually released.

-Erik

 

[Sianath]

It's already improved dramatically.