Microsoft is undergoing some serious changes these days. Along with high-ranked officials leaving the company (Bill Gates being by far the bomb of the year, followed by the head of Windows Live project, Martin Taylor), there are also a couple of modifications in Microsoft's plans that really shake the IT world.
Plans for WinFS have been made since Windows Vista was known as Longhorn. Since the beginning it was meant to become one of Longhorn's strong points in the battle against Linux and/or MacOSX. Everyone would appreciate a Windows OS with a strong file system, object-oriented, with a lot of search capabilities that would ease day-to-day routines.

Well, it's a beautiful dream and only a thing of the past. Or maybe we might just get lucky to see it in some sort of uncompromised new version of Microsoft SQL Server or ADO.NET.

In 2003, Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates said: "WinFS--this is unified storage. Some of you here have heard me talk about unified storage for more than a decade. The idea of taking the XML flexibility, database technology, getting it into the file system: that's been a Holy Grail for me for quite some time. And here it is. Thank goodness we have got the powerful systems to be able to do this thing. Thank goodness we have the evolution around XML and user interface capabilities, so that this can all come together."

Now it is certain that the Holy Grail is out of reach, probably foreve:" we are not pursuing a separate delivery of WinFS, including the previously planned Beta 2 release. 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." Said Quentin Clark, on the official MS blog, on Friday, June 23.

The tone of the announcement was later "sweetened": "We will continue working the innovations, and as things mature they will find their way into the right product experiences- Windows and otherwise. Having so much ready for SQL Server and ADO.NET is a big impact on the platform, and more will come."

For the moment things are rather unclear. We do not know for certain that the next Microsoft OS, Windows Vista, shall have a relational file system "inherited" from the deceased WinFS, or if Microsoft is planning a separate system (in any way, the Vista Beta 2 version has come up with a lot of original improvements in file-search domain, much superior to Windows XP, but we cannot say for sure that Microsoft is going to stick to them). For now, all we know is that the next version of SQL Server would support unstructured data and that entities from WinFS got adopted in ADO.NET.

Many are disappointed by Microsoft's decision. Comments have been made that the Redmond giant is killing a project that has lasted for more than 10 years, and a strong point for Vista. Actually, when Longhorn was first presented as the next big-thing for Microsoft, WinFS and the Aero interface were the first two things that company officials used to lure and attract public's interest.

The entire article can be found here

The author is a registered user of Creative Reporter - join our blogging community today.