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How Microsoft Is Clipping Longhorn | |
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| Time: 12:19 EST/17:19 GMT | News Source: Business Week Online | Posted By: Todd Richardson | ||
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Never in its history has Microsoft (MSFT ) had to wait so long between Windows releases. When Windows XP launched in October, 2001, researcher Gartner Inc. expected the software giant to gin up a new version within two years. But Microsoft's ambitious follow-up to Windows XP, code-named Longhorn, has bogged down in delays. The company rarely discloses timelines for products, lest it miss its targets. But in copies of two e-mail messages obtained by BusinessWeek, Microsoft lays out a roadmap that shows Longhorn debuting in the first six months of 2006. What's more, the e-mails disclose Microsoft's plans to cut some of the most far-reaching pieces of Longhorn in order to get the product shipped. For instance, Microsoft had planned to overhaul the file system, the way information is stored. The goal had been to change the way files relate to one another, so that users could quickly find documents, e-mail, and photos that have some connection to one another. It would be easy, for example, to locate not just digital photos, but e-mail from people in them. It's an enormous undertaking. | ||
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| #1 By 2332 (65.221.182.2) at 4/10/2004 2:27:20 PM |
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Ok, this is not nearly as big a deal as I thought. They're really only "clipping" the network access to WinFS. Local WinFS is still part of Longhorn.
See: http://www.winnetmag.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/42330/windowspaulthurrott_42330.html |
| #2 By 3339 (64.160.58.135) at 4/10/2004 3:24:40 PM |
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"Ok, this is not nearly as big a deal as I thought."
It's a big deal to me, and I would imagine ALL corporate installs of Windows. At work, I have about 2 files at any one time stored locally and usually only temporarily. Everything else is networked based. I would imagine this is very much the case for most companies. So... essentially, WinFS is virtually useless for a corporate, networked environment. I wonder how much of this is technical difficulty or a marketing desire to push SharePoint. Probably both, but mostly the former, and in MS's eyes having the side benefit of the later. |
| #3 By 2332 (65.221.182.2) at 4/11/2004 1:18:21 AM |
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It's a big deal to me, and I would imagine ALL corporate installs of Windows.
Sigh... They're not removing the ability to access the filesystem from the network, Sodajerk. They're removing the ability to access WinFS from the network. In case you don't know, WinFS is a meta data and query layer on top of the traditional filesystem. Not being able to access that meta data or query engine from a network is not a big deal. I wonder how much of this is technical difficulty or a marketing desire to push SharePoint. I doubt Sharepoint has anything to do with this decision at all. |
| #4 By 2459 (24.175.141.98) at 4/11/2004 6:35:07 PM |
| Since Longhorn Server could come anywhere up to a year after the client release, they may have just deferred the networked WinFS to ship with the server release and as part of a service pack for the client. This would give them more time to flesh out the implementation and cover more test cases, especially for corporate networking scenarios. |
| #5 By 3339 (64.160.58.135) at 4/11/2004 9:59:17 PM |
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RMD, I don't get what you are talking about. I didn't say that I believed it was going to be impossible to access the filesystem from the network. I said if the features of WinFS don't extend across the network, they are essentially useless to me and most corporations.
"The current plan calls for the file system to work on PCs but not extend to files shared over a corporate network." And, yes, that is a big deal. |
| #6 By 2332 (65.221.182.2) at 4/12/2004 2:37:09 AM |
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#8 - I didn't say that I believed it was going to be impossible to access the filesystem from the network.
Really? You certainly suggested it. You said: At work, I have about 2 files at any one time stored locally and usually only temporarily. Why would you say something like that if you knew that accessing those files would still be possible over a network? Seems to me that you didn't understand what WinFS really was, you made a statement that clearly showed your ignorance, and when I called you on it you try and pretend that you have a clue. I said if the features of WinFS don't extend across the network, they are essentially useless to me and most corporations. No, that's not what you said at all. But even if that's what you did mean to say, you're still wrong. WinFS, as I've said before, allows you to associate meta data with files, and files with other files. It allows you to do complex queries on that meta data, and form meaningful relationships between both the logical and physical parts of that data. Local applications running on PCs could fully take advantage of this, even if that same information was not accessible remotely. To say that WinFS is useless in most corporations only further proves that you have little understanding of the technology and the potential it has. Not a single one of the demos Microsoft has published has demonstrated the use of WinFS over a network, yet I would say that the demos prove how valuable WinFS is to pretty much everybody. Unless you can point out how everything Microsoft has shown regarding WinFS in its current state is, in fact, useless, you're wrong no matter how you spin it. This post was edited by RMD on Monday, April 12, 2004 at 02:38. |
| #7 By 3339 (64.160.58.135) at 4/12/2004 12:28:35 PM |
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"WinFS, as I've said before, allows you to associate meta data with files, and files with other files. It allows you to do complex queries on that meta data, and form meaningful relationships between both the logical and physical parts of that data. Local applications running on PCs could fully take advantage of this, even if that same information was not accessible remotely. "
No fcking sh1t, you can stop pretending I'm clueless and that I suggested that there was no network access with Longhorn. What I am saying is: I cannot build these queries across networked drives so what is the point in querying the 2 files I have locally? There isn't one. All of the data I work with is spread across a large network. "Why would you say something like that if you knew that accessing those files would still be possible over a network?" Because I can access them, but not query them, RMD. We were discussing the usefulness of a locally-limited WinFS and not the functionality of a networked filesystem which all of us have taken for granted for many years now, right? Meaning WinFS is useless. NTFS is good enough to allow me to access them. What I want to do is add network files to stacks, query them, etc... Why would someone presume that when I say WinFS is useless for me in a networked environment, you think I believe there is no network access and we have reverted to some file system 30 years old with none of the features of NTFS? That's a pretty moronic assumption in my mind. What I am saying is NTFS is good enough if functionality of WinFS doesn't extend to networks. What I am saying is that the useful features of WinFS only work on local files. Since all of my files are stored on network drives, I cannot utilize what I thought were useful features on them. Hence, it is useless to me and any corporation that stores most of their files across many drives on a network. Any other utility provided by WinFS is already provided by SharePoint and other services for networked volumes. This post was edited by sodajerk on Monday, April 12, 2004 at 20:56. |
| #8 By 2332 (65.221.182.2) at 4/12/2004 1:26:25 PM |
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#10 - Again, you show your ignorance jerky boy.
If you had looked into how WinFS works, you would realize that the meta data for a file and the file itself are stored in different locations. What this means is that you can still have your files on a networked drive but the meta data for those files can be stored locally. Only the meta data would be restricted to local access. The only thing that Microsoft is cutting from Longhorn is the ability to access that meta data across the network. Nice try though. |
| #9 By 3339 (64.160.58.135) at 4/12/2004 1:53:55 PM |
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Sounds nice, RMD, but by all indications from what I HAVE READ, the functionality will not work across networks.
This article and others about what is being cut back do not say that WinFS functionality will still work across networks because the meta data will be stored locally... They are saying: "The current plan calls for the file system to work on PCs but not extend to files shared over a corporate network." Even as I read your interpretation, this is pretty useless to me. What is the point in user A having completely different metadata for file 1 than user B has for file 1? What happens to the local metadata when the file is updated on the network by another user? Hell, what about contact metadata--will it be entirely different if I log onto OWA from home? etc... If metadata is entirely user-centric rather than network-centric, the metadata is useless to me from a corporate perspective. As for what MS has said, they say something different everytime. By my reckoning, synchorinization and Info Agents will be completed gutted from the Longhorn release. Is that readily apparent? Maybe not, but it wasn't clear in the first place how MS was implementing this. These two features are clearly rather network-centric and have been the sole focus of many discussions of WinFS... What has become of them? This post was edited by sodajerk on Monday, April 12, 2004 at 17:54. |
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