cloudy, chance of sun breaks: be careful what you ask for:
John comments:
Microsoft seems to have realized that we keep building database features into applications and layering them on top of the OS. I am no Redmond booster, but a light came on in my head when I saw what could be done by building the database into the OS in the first place.
They have also realized that by letting people keep all their information as files on a disk, the switching cost of moving to another platform is dangerously low. So moving all client data into a proprietary datastore, in the guise of a fast indexed “file system,” could be a trojan horse. This won’t be a file system as we know it, but a database without a backing store (where Zoe is a database/index built on top of the mbox files, WinFS sounds like a database without the underlying files). Creating a new file will mean you’re creating a new database record, and editing an existing one will be updating one.
So all the icons you see in your Windows explorer will be abstractions: where a “file” is actually a record in your filesystem’s allocation table and the inodes that hold the data, you could end up with a a disk that, when removed from a machine, might contain just one “file.” It will be the raw disk space managed by the database/filesystem layer, and otherwise unusable.
Add to this the notion that access to the data will be managed through the .NET architecture — you run a .NET server at your enterprise or pay a fee to MSFT to use one of theirs(!!) — and I think it’s pretty risky.
Contrast this with all the talk about storing all Office application documents in XML — light, open, and human-readable — and I have to wonder which is the real strategy. These are likely being built by different groups — WinFS would be owned by the OS group — which might explain the differing positions.
And of course, we have seen what happened when the broswer got built into the OS: it became moribund and stale. Market forces are a powerful thing, and sometimes the only leverage you have.
Reading the full article might make these points more clear. There may be updates as well: I should take a look myself.